Freezing Broccoli

I cut broccoli tonight for the first time this year. It really is growing well this year; one of the heads was at least a foot across!

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Last fall I bought a FoodSaver vacuum sealer and it is really going to come in handy with freezing vegetables. I have already used it to freeze meats, and did some pea pods with it a couple of weeks ago.
The first thing that you need to do before you freeze broccoli (and many other veggies) is to blanch it. This is simply dipping it into boiling water for 3 minutes, then plunging it into a clean sink full of very cold water. The cold water stops the cooking process immediately. Blanching stops the action of the natural enzymes in the vegetables, enzymes that could cause discoloration, off-flavors and toughening of the vegetables.
The vacuum sealer is fun and easy to use too. The bags come in rolls and you cut off the amount that you need. Then you have to seal one end of it:

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Then I place the amount that I will use in one or two meals, any more will probably end up being wasted.

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Then the remaining open end of the bag is placed over the sealing strip of the sealing unit.

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Then close the lid and turn it on.

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In just about 20-30 seconds it sucks all of the air out of the bag and seals the open end with heat.

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I always mark the bags before I freeze them with the date and contents.

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Without much air in the bag, the contents will last much longer and without much danger of freezer burn.

Still Planting In The Veggie Garden

I ran out of room in the garden. I think no matter how much room I will ever get, I will fill it up. This is not unlike the fact that as people make more money they will spend more money also. I even have a 'second addition' to the garden that I started last year behind my shed. That is where I grow my melons and such, the things that really spread out and take up room.

I had planted a row of 25 red raspberries on the edge of my property, close to my 2 lines of asparagus. I noticed that the one row of asparagus was way too close to the raspberries and decided to till that line of asparagus in and remove it. That left a wide (5 feet?) area in between the asparagus and raspberries. I was thinking that will be a waste of space, until the raspberries grow up in a year or two, so I decided to use it more effectively.

I made a long narrow hill of dirt about 20 feet long and planted the carrots on the top of the hill. I've done this before and the carrots grow easier in our clay soil this way, in fact they grow GREAT this way for this type of soil. I grow the Danvers Half Long variety which don't grow nearly as deep as other varieties. In the area next to the hill I broadcast the rest of the carrot seed over a wider area. I wanted to experiment and compare growing them in the hill, versus broadcasting them on a flat piece of ground.

That was about half of the open area I decided to use. In the other half, I planted 2 varieties of beets; Cylindra, and Detroit Dark Red. I would have planted all of it as Cylindra but decided to use the seed that I had on-hand. Cylindra makes a wonderful bet that is in more like the shape of a carrot than the typical round beet. This makes for very uniform slices and is nice to use in pickling.

So here it is June 7th and I am still planting away. I will post some recent pics of the garden process very soon.

We be jammin' (Strawberries)

I love berries. LOVE them. Strawberries are far from my favorite berry, but they rock because they bear fruit so early in the year. For probably 20 years now I have been making jam and always look forward to picking them in late May/early June. I usually make 15-20 pints of jam and freeze anywhere from 5-10 one-gallon bags of them also.
I have been picking strawberries since the mid 80s at a nearby place called Jacquemin Farms, http://www.jacqueminfarms.com Kerry Sullivan (married name, she's one of the Jacquemins) told me the farm started out as a way to save a little money for college. It's quite an operation now, and they have ventured into many other farm-market products. I'd give my left leg to have a place like theirs!
My son Weston and I went to Jacquemin's this past Saturday and picked about 15 lbs of strawberries. I hope to get there at least twice more at that rate.
Here's Weston doing what he does best when we go there:

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Which leaves me to do the picking

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Actually Weston does a pretty good job, once he fills his stomach.

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I freeze about half of what I pick, freezing is easy. There is one trick that I have learned, though. If you place them in freezer bags you will end up with a solid block of strawberries. However, I place them on a cookie sheet and freeze them on the sheet first:

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After a couple of hours in the freezer I place them in the freezer bags and they don't stick together. This makes it easy to use only a few at a time, or as many as you want, versus using a sledgehammer to break up the frozen block of berries.

We be jammin
I use Sure Jell Light to make strawberry jam, with less sugar being used you taste more of the berries instead of all the sugar. It's a lot more expensive than some other pectins, but it is extremely reliable.
A microwave oven is a simple, fast easy tool to use to sterilize your jars and keep them warm until you pour the jam into them

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Place about a inch of water into each clean jar and microwave them until the water is boiling. Then I use my microwave's "Hold Warm" option to keep them warm until ready to use.

First, crush the berries, a cup or two at a time, in a bowl until you get the required amount of crushed berries. It was 6 cups for Sure Jell Light's recipe. I use a coffee mug to crush them, using a glass would be dangerous if it broke, but you can use almost anything

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I don't crush my berries much, the boiling that comes later breaks them down enough already, and I like chunks of berries in my jam. This is what they look like after I crush them slightly:

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Jam and jelly recipes call for EXACT measurements, so I use a butter knife to smooth off the remaining sugar in the measuring cup:

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In the recipes you will read what is described as a 'full rolling boil'. This is a hard boil that does not reduce when stirred, and looks something like this even when stirred:

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I sterilize my lids in a small separate bowl in boiling water for five minutes, then keep them on the burner turned to low to keep them hot until ready to use:

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The green rod in the picture is a magnetic lid lifter (sounds like an Acme product that Wile E Coyote uses!) which is an invaluable inexpensive tool.


When the cooking has completed according to the pectin recipe instructions, quickly ladle the jam into jars, leaving an eighth of an inch of headspace(the remaining empty space in the jar)

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I dont think today's recipes call for this next step anymore, but I still do it. I turn the jars upside down for about 5 minutes

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Then I turn them over and label them. I do this the easy way, with a Sharpie, writing directly on the lid, but sometimes I get fancy and make nice labels with my computer.
We eat a lot of it at home, but jam makes GREAT gifts, and I give many of them away during the year.