Food Preservation 2011 August

Wow Time sure is flying!!

My garden is doing well.  It was planted Memorial Day weekend and so far we have enjoyed kohlrabi, peppers and peas.  The boys have discovered the joy of garden fresh peas and green beans.  My experiment this year is edamame (green soybeans). I purchased 1 package and was intending to only plant 1/2 of the package, until the entire package was dumped into the garden as we were planting....so we have LOTS of plants.  Japanese/Asian Beatles like edamame leaves, and basil.  Thankfully they have moved on and both plants have survived. The soybeans are full of pods - I think there will be a bunch going into the freezer at the end of the month.

Whats in the freezer? So far I have put 6-7 half-pints of pizza sauce using Mrs. Wages pizza sauce mix into half pint jars into the freezer.  Dried 2 bunches of celery in the dehydrator - that dried down to a quart jar of leaves and a half pint jar of stems ( the celery is from my CSA Share so its different than what comes from the grocery store.  I have 1 more bunch I need to dehydrate tomorrow.

Tonight I froze 2 lbs of greenbeans, also from our CSA.  I followed the directions from http://www.greenbeansnmore.com/frozen-green-beans.html.  After the beans were blanched and in the ice water bath I used my salad spinner to remove excess water and divided the beans into 2 bags. The beans were left whole.  Wonder if I can get another bag from the garden - if the kids have not eaten them all, if so oh, well, right?  I will use at least some of these beans to make green bean puree/baby food in a few months.

I have also frozen a bit of roasted corn.  I would like to try dehydrating corn, really need to get on that this weekend before the corn is off the market stands.

RANDOM TIDBITS
Life with three kids is busy...but the summer was great!  Now the day care kids are back, hopefully once preschool starts I will find my balance again because currently it is missing. My oldest is in third grade and off to a great start!

Cloth diapers are in full use...not to find time to sew up some more girlly ones with snaps so I can quit using the hook and loop ones I keep pulling out of the bag - pocket diapers are so much easier to use day to day than prefolds.  Prefolds are a great way to get started and work well for infants but then I discovered pocket diapers... and now i'm ready to switch to them full time, again.