Obviously the CSA has provided lots of great fresh veggies, but we are also seeing produce from our backyard square foot gardens as well as the kids’ summer garden club.
I try hard to use it all up or preserve it for winter. And then I try hard to be gentle with myself for the things I do throw out because I just didn’t get to them. It is safe to say that vegetables have been taking up a fair amount of my time.
A few weeks ago I had an overload of spinach. I thought I’d try freezing some for a lasagna or something later this year. What did I learn? That it takes a LOT of spinach to make one little package of blanched/frozen spinach! This is some of what I started with:
Spinach from the backyard.
There was a huge abundance of lettuce so we ate salads at least once a day. We also ate a lot of radishes.
Recently Grace brought me 4 BIG kohlrabi from her garden. Along with the kohlrabi from the CSA, I was sure we’d never eat it all raw. It is really good with Ranch dip or a taco dip. So I cubed, blanched and froze several packages of that…18 cups total! I plan to use it for part of the potatoes in my potato soup recipe and in vegetable soups and stews.
18 cups of kohlrabi
And then, of course, there was the pea pick. I got 6 packages of peas and a dozen packages of sugar snap peas. I flash froze the sugar snap peas before putting them in bags. I plan to use them in stir-fries and read that if you take them out and add to salads still frozen they are good, so we’ll try that.
18 cups of peas
I can only imagine what else I’ll put in the freezer this year! I picked a large bowl of green beans already. I have to get out my pickled bean recipe. Yumm! Does anyone have any other good ideas for green beans?
