Streamline Vegetable Freezing

August 4, 2014 by Kathie 7 Comments

The garden is producing well and while we are eating from it at every meal, we’re still having more than enough to preserve for the winter.  I employ many methods of food preservation, I probably can more than anything else but I also dehydrate, ferment, and freeze.  I like canning because it’s shelf stable and unlike freezing I don’t have to worry about my food spoiling should the power go out.  However, I don’t like the flavor or texture of certain things canned or dried and so those things are frozen.  Things like broccoli, peas, peppers, snow peas and berries are just better frozen in my opinion.  When freezing vegetables there’s an easy way to systemize the process so that it gets done quickly and correctly for the best flavor later.  Streamline vegetable freezing by following this process:

1. Get Vegetables Ready

Get vegetables completely ready before beginning.  Shell peas, peel broccoli, remove the strings from snow peas, etc.  Keep a bucket or bowl for the compost heap close by, this helps keep the work space clean and allows for quicker prep.

2. Bring Water to Boil

I use a pot with a pasta / steamer basket component.  This makes doing multiple batches easier as the water stays hot and you don’t need to dump out the water to strain the vegetables each and every time.  If you don’t have that kind of pot, that’s fine, you’ll just have to dump the water through a colander to strain the vegetables in the next step.

3. Boil or Steam the Vegetables

Each vegetable has an optimum time to be blanched before being frozen.  I use the table in Preserving Summer’s Bounty as it’s one of my favorite preservation resources, butsimilar tables can be found in many places. 

4. Drain the Vegetables

When using the pasta pot, I simply lift that top section and give it a good shake, letting all the water drain from the vegetables back into the pot.  Again, use a colander if you don’t have that kind of pot.  What’s important is to get as much water as possible removed from the vegetables.

5. Cool the Vegetables

Spread the drained vegetables out onto a towel and allow to cool.  This prevents ice crystals from forming in your frozen vegetables which can comprise flavor and texture.  If you’re doing multiple batches or vegetables: let these sit and begin at the beginning, re-using and reheating the water in your pot.

6. Store

Put the cooled vegetables into serving size portions in freezer bags or jars and freeze for later.  As much as I don’t like plastic, this is a place where I use the plastic bags, because they can be stored flat for optimum freezer space usage.

7. Save the Cooking Water

The water is infused with plenty of flavor and nutrients.  You could freeze it as a weak vegetable both if desired.  I have found that the flavor is a bit too weak for my general taste, however; it makes a delightful cooking liquid for rice if you’re inclined to keep it around.  I’ve also been known to pour the cooled cooking water onto plants for a little nutrient boost.

That’s it.  Freezing is a great way to preserve the texture of tender vegetables – I just don’t like how broccoli and peas get in the pressure canner and it’s a quick way to move through multiple small batches of garden produce.

Guest Post: 4 Tips On Growing Zucchini by Mike The Gardener

Greenhouse & Seed Starting, Le Jardin (French For The Garden if your not sure ;)...), Sustainable Living, The Suburban Homestead Life, Uncategorized

by KarenLynn

4 Tips on Growing Zucchini

Zucchini is by far the most popular type of summer squash grown in home vegetable gardens throughout the United States and maybe even the world. Zucchini’s ease of growing, prolific production, and wide range of culinary uses makes its popularity a no brainer. Throw in the dozens of heirloom varieties you have to choose from for your growing zone, and you can see why everyone has zucchini in their home garden.

A few zucchini plants can easily yield plenty of this delicately flavored fruit for a family of four or more. I should know I have a family of four and with only 4 plants I give plenty away to my neighbors.

While zucchini are easy to grow in most areas, a few tips can go a long way, so I wanted to share with you what I do so as to avoid some headaches along the way.

DIRECT SOW

I am in growing zone 7a according the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Our growing season without frost starts on or about May 1st and will continue through the end of September. For the sake of growing zucchini, mid May to the end of August is more ideal and realistic for optimum production.

That gives me about three solid months of growing season for zucchini, which is plenty of time. For a long time I would start my seeds indoors to get a jump start, but found out, when it comes to zucchini, that really isn’t necessary. Now I direct sow my seeds into the garden at the beginning of May and by the end of June I am picking plenty of zucchini.

Those of you that are in growing zones 6a and higher, you can get away with direct sowing your seeds. If your growing zone is less than 6a you may still be able to get away with direct sowing zucchini seeds. However, your growing season is shorter therefore you might want to start some zucchini seeds indoors.

NO CROWDING
In years past I would plant my zucchini about eighteen to twenty-four inches from each other. I did this to help save on a bit of space. What I found out was that my zucchini plants became more susceptible to powdery mildew. When I moved them further apart (at least thirty inches), I noticed they would develop far less of this destructive fungal disease. My research concluded that allowing more air to circulate around the plant helped reduce powdery mildew.

MOVE THEM AROUND EACH SEASON
Squash bugs, stink bugs, and squash vine borers are just 3 of the destructive insects that will set their sights on your zucchini plants. While these insects are harmless to humans, they are far from that when it comes to zucchini. They will suck the life out of your plants in a matter of days.

If you are like me and you do not like to spray your plants with harmful pesticides, one of the best methods I have found in battling these pests is to simply move your zucchini plants around from one season to the next. A practice you should really use in all crops, but especially with zucchini.

Is this method full proof? Of course not, but is has definitely helped me prolong my zucchini season. Using this tip along with planting my zucchini between peppers and cucumbers has helped out a great deal.

HARVEST AT THE IDEAL SIZE
If you have ever grown zucchini or have ever seen a friend, neighbor or relative grow zucchini then you probably know how fast zucchini can grow. A two inch zucchini today can be a foot and a half zucchini tomorrow. They grow that fast! The ideal size to pick, in my opinion, a zucchini is ten to twelve inches. I find that any shorter and there simply is not enough to the zucchini to eat and if picked any longer the zucchini has way too many seeds.

As with any plant, zucchini are no different, they must be fed in order to produce. Feed your zucchini plants weekly with a good fertilizer, compost tea and so on. Don’t be shocked if you get a couple of zucchini early and then nothing for a week. They come in bunches. Just be patient.

About the Author
Mike Podlesny is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person as well as the creator of the Seeds of the Month Club where members receive non gmo, heirloom variety seeds every month. You can listen to Mike each week on the Vegetable Gardening Podcast where he interviews gardening industry experts.

Pepper Mania – How To Use All Of Those Peppers!

Posted on August 24, 2014 by oldworldgarden in Life in the Garden, Sunday Farm Update // 0 Comments

With the largest portion of the tomato crop in for the year and our canning cabinet full of everything from tomato juice to salsa, pasta sauce, ketchup and more – it’s now time for the pepper crop to take over.  And wow – has it ever!

Mariachi peppers growing in the garden

In just the last few weeks – the peppers have come to life in the garden and landscape. As much as we love growing all of the beautiful heirloom varieties of tomatoes  – the colors, varieties and flavor range of the peppers have always made them my personal favorite to grow.

We grew over 20 varieties of peppers in the garden and landscape this year, with about half of them hot. California Wonder and Big Bertha Green, Red, Yellow and Orange Bell, Marconi, Italian Roaster, Mariachi, Lunchbox, Super Cayenne, Mama Mia, Chinese Lantern, Jalapeno, Hot Banana, Cajun Belle, Ghost, Carolina Reaper, Poinsettia and Sangria all found their way onto the farm this year. And all of them are now loaded with peppers!

A bushel of assorted peppers just picked from the garden

When it comes to hot peppers – hot peppers get their heat and kick from capsaicin, the substance located in the seed pod and in the membrane lining of the pepper’s inner walls.

If you remove that – you remove most of the heat. We happen to love the heat – so we usually leave most of it in.

So – what do we do with all of our peppers?

Green Bell, Sweet Red and Yellow peppers – They are of course amazing to just slice and eat fresh and perfect for relish trays.  We also use them to stuff with chicken and rice and for our stir fry dinners.

Roasted red peppers – sealed and ready for storage.

For later use – freezing is the name of the game. We slice them up and use a food saver to shrink-wrap them into stir fry packets for use through the winter. Mary also uses the red to make and can a delicious roasted red pepper recipe : (see : Roasted Red Pepper recipe)

Marconi and Italian Roaster peppers – Big fleshy and meaty – both of these make for excellent stuffed peppers and are great for pasta dishes.

Jalapeno peppers – Another versatile and much used pepper in our house – we use them to eat fresh and in our salsa and picante – as well as to make one of our favorite – stuffed jalapeno poppers.

Cowboy Candy – what a delicious and surprisingly sweet treat!

Of course, when it comes to canning – nothing can beat the taste of Cowboy Candy – a perfectly spiced and sweet condiment made with jalapenos. (See: Cowboy Candy recipe).

We leave many of our jalapenos to turn red on the plants – and then smoke them into chipotle peppers. (see: making your own Chipotle Peppers)

Cajun Belle Peppers – The Cajun Belle is one of our favorites. It grows so well for us with super high yields of 2″ peppers that have very little seed core.  They are another pepper that seems to have the perfect blend of sweet with a little heat. We use them to make stuffed cheese appetizers and they are also great to add color and zing to salads and salsa.

Hot Banana peppers – grown as the main ingredient in Mary’s famous (and secret) Hot Pepper Mustard.  We also use them sliced up in salads and they are the perfect fit to spice up a sandwich!  We also use them to make hot pepper rings (see : hot banana pepper ring recipe)

Chinese Hot Pepper, Cayenne , Chili Chili, Black Pearl, Calico and  Poinsettia peppers

So last but not least – when we have made everything we can think of and we still have hundreds of peppers left – we make our own pepper flakes, pepper powder, taco seasoning and even chili powder from our peppers.

Hot pepper flakes and powder made from our peppers.

It is a great way to use up loads of peppers before they go bad – and so simple to do! The taste is so much more flavorful than anything you can buy in the supermarket – and without all of the added preservatives and sodium! See : Hot Pepper Flake/Powder recipe  and  Taco Seasoning / Chili Powder recipe

Ghost Pepper and Carolina Reaper peppers – I really don’t know and can’t explain why we grow these. They are beyond hot – in fact – the Carolina Reaper registers 1.2 million Scoville units on the heat scale – compare that to the 3,000 of a jalapeno – and it would be ridiculous to try to eat them. However – they are great for our impromptu family hot pepper eating contests – and the perfect remedy for that person that says they can handle “anything hot” :)

Peppers In The Landscape

Flower pots like this one filled with Sangria peppers can add a lot of color and conversation to your landscape

On a final note – one of our favorite things to do with our pepper plants is to use them to brighten up the landscape. We use our ornamental varieties such as Sangria, Chinese lantern, Calico and Poinsettia in our flower beds and in hanging pots to add color where needed. They are unbelievably hardy, and their hundreds of colorful blooms bring the landscape to life – in an edible way!

Whatever you use – peppers are a great way to grow a little flavor and color into your life!

If you would like to receive our Sunday Farm Update – be sure to sign up to follow the blog via email in the right hand column, “like” us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Happy Gardening,

Jim and Mary

Old World Garden Farms

Homemade Ketchup Recipe From Fresh Tomatoes – Never Use Store Bought Again!

Posted on August 22, 2014 by oldworldgarden in Cooking, Recipes // 2 Comments

Does anyone have a food mill in our neighborhood?  I would really like to try this this year.

Who doesn’t love ketchup?  In America, it is the most popular condiment found in households today. Adding it to burgers or dogs, using it as a dip for french fries and potato chips, and even adding it to your scrambled eggs is considered common practice.

simple and delicious home made kethcup

However, if you have every looked at a bottle of ketchup and sorted through a long list of unfamiliar ingredients, you would see that almost every brand has high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) added to it.

It might not always be as easy to see on the label because many times HFCS is also camouflaged as other ingredients: maize syrup, glucose, glucose-fructose syrup, tapioca syrup, dahlia syrup, fruit fructose, crystalline fructose, and isoglucose.

We place our ketchup in an old fashioned bottle and refill as needed.

So if you are trying to avoid adding (or unknowingly being added) HFCS to your diet consider – using those extra tomatoes to make your own ketchup!

We keep our ketchup in a standard squeeze bottle for everyday use in the refrigerator, replacing the contents from our canning pantry as needed.  No more high fructose corn syrup for us!!!

Homemade Ketchup Recipe

Ingredients:

18 lbs of paste tomatoes (or if using slicing tomatoes you will need about 25 lbs)

3 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar

3 tablespoons celery seed

1 cup chopped onions

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 cup brown sugar (or sugar substitute)

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Instructions:

Freshly chopped tomatoes beginning to cook down on the stove

1. Wash, core, and cut tomatoes into approximately one inch squares. *No need to remove peels at this time

2. Place in a large stockpot and place on medium heat.  Heat until tomatoes simmer, stirring occasionally.

3. Add onions, garlic, pepper, cayenne pepper, sugar, dry mustard and cinnamon to the tomatoes.  Let simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Separate celery seed from vinegar before adding it to the tomato mixture

4. Place vinegar and celery seeds in a medium stockpot.  Bring to a boil and turn down to a simmer for 30 minutes while the tomatoes are simmering.

5. Place tomato mixture in the food mill to remove the skin and seeds.  Place remaining liquid in a 6 quart crock pot.  You may have extra liquid that you can add in later.

Place liquid in crockpot and reduce for several hours to the desired thickness

6. Strain the celery seeds out of the vinegar and mix 3 cups of vinegar into the crock pot with the tomato mixture.

Place ketchup in hot mason jars and process in a hot water bath.

7. If you have extra liquid(s), you will be able to add it to the crockpot as evaporation occurs.

8. Set crockpot on a low setting with the lid removed or vented.  Reduce by half – or to your desired thickness. (I let it sit overnight in the crockpot).  The time will vary depending on how hot your crockpot gets. We let ours thicken for 14 hours.

9. Pour hot ketchup into sterilized and hot half-pint canning jars. Add warm lid and seal with the band.  Process in a hot water bath, adjusting for altitude as needed, for 35 minutes for half-pints or pints, and 40 minutes for quarts.

Enjoy!

Refrigerator Pickles

In case anyone wants to make some pickles this year..

Here is my mom's recipe for refrigerator pickles. You don't have to process them. They can stay in your fridge for up to 6 months.

Angela & Nicole did not have room in her fridge for these, so we water bathed these jars for 10 minutes...like the dilly beans.. these pickles are the bomb!!

Refrigerator Pickles

In each Quart jar put:

2 dill heads

2 cloves garlic ( smash open with a knife)

1/2 jalapeno ( with seeds if you want them spicy)

1/8 onion any color ( chunk of onion)

Load bottles with cucumber spears

Brine:

Bring to boil

3 1/2 cups water

2 1/2 cups cider vinegar

1 tbs. Pickling Spice  

6 tbs. sugar

6 tbs. pickling salt  

1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes 

1/2 tsp. peppercorns 

Banana Pepper Rings – How to Preserve Your Hot Peppers

Posted on August 15, 2014 by oldworldgarden in Cooking, DIY, Recipes // 5 Comments

Over the past few weeks we have been focusing on how to preserve, can and freeze all of our garden tomatoes.  Now that our tomato crop is finally winding down to a manageable level, it is time to switch our focus to preserving our hot peppers.

Banana Peppers ready to be picked and preserved

We love to eat banana and jalapeno rings on our sandwiches, pizzas, nachos and in various other dishes. We have always preserved our peppers this way, however we did change one minor detail this year. In the past we used pint jars – which seemed like a terrific idea because of the amount of produce you can pack into one jar. However, after we would open a jar, we would use only 1/4-1/2 of the contents, with the rest going to waste.  So this year, we decided the smart thing to do is to can all of our hot pepper rings in half-pint jars, hoping to stay within our theme of reducing waste in our home.

You can use this recipe with almost any pepper that you have. Don’t limit yourself to banana peppers.  You can use this same pickling brine liquid to preserve jalapenos, habenaros,  cajun belles, cayenne peppers, and more.  Just make sure you label each jar so you know what you are putting on that pizza!

Banana Pepper Ring Pickling Recipe

Slice peppers to your desired thickness, leaving the seeds intact.

*makes 6 half pint jars

Ingredients:

1 lb of hot peppers

3 cups of white vinegar

2 cups of water

3 teaspoons of pickling salt

3 cloves of garlic

Instructions:

Make sure to wear gloves when slicing the peppers to prevent burns and irritation

*Prepare canning jars (sterilize and keep warm) and prepare hot water bath.

1. Most important step –If you are working with hot peppers be sure to wear gloves before slicing them.  Believe me, a pound of hot peppers doesn’t seem like a lot, but your fingers will burn and ache for hours if you don’t wear gloves.

2. Wash and stem peppers.  Slice into 1/8-1/4 inch slices.  Set aside.

Pack rings in the jars and then add the hot liquid.

3. Place vinegar, water,and pickling salt in a medium sauce pan and place on medium heat.

4. Peel and smash the garlic cloves and place them in the vinegar/water mixture.

5. Heat to boiling.

6. Remove skins of garlic and cut each clove in half.

7. Fill each hot jars with 1/2 of a clove a garlic and then add the pepper slices, making sure to leave 1/4″ of headspace at the top of the jar.

The peppers float to the top of the jar when heated, but return to the bottom once cooled.

8. Ladle the hot liquid into the jars filling to cover the peppers, maintaining the 1/4″ of headspace. Use a plastic utensil to remove any air bubbles – you may need to add additional liquid.

9. Add warm lid and ring.  Process in hot water bath for 10 minutes for half pints or pint jars.  * Adjust for altitude as necessary.

10. Remove and let cool for 24 hours. Check to make sure the jar is sealed prior to storing.  If jars did not seal (the lid bounces up and down), place in refrigerator and use within 2 weeks.

Enjoy!

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Mary and Jim