I Am JUST LIKE Ma Ingalls. If She Had A Freezer.

So, I already told y'all at my other blog about the joy of buying and eating fresh veggies but I have decided that we like them so much there has to be a way to get that fresh veggie goodness in the winter. Tom's mother used to can fresh green beans and those were the best green beans I have ever eaten IN MY LIFE. But I just can't see myself canning vegetables. For one thing, I'm a little, tiny bit lazy. For another. Well, I'm kind of scared of the pressure cooker.

But I decided that maybe I could, just possibly, freeze some fresh vegetables for next winter. I had a vision. My freezer would be packed with bags of colorful, fresh vegetables and I would take out a couple and whip up some homemade vegetable soup and some fresh bread and some homemade peach cobbler and then I would go down and chop some logs for the fire and possibly skin a bear so we could have a rug to sit on in the front of the fire.

OK, maybe just the vegetables thing.

Being the inveterate librarian I am, I started with research and found this web site. And it didn't look that hard. So, Tom and I went to the Farmer's Market and bought 5 pounds of green beans, along with tomatoes, strawberries, cantaloupe and peaches. And, can I just say? Is there a smell better than the smell of sun-warmed peaches? We walked by that booth and HAD to buy some. If they could just bottle that smell, someone would make a kazillion dollars.

So, here's what I started with. Five pounds of green beans.

It sure looked like a lot less once I got them cleaned and ready to blanch. And, are you suitably impressed that I used the word "blanch"? I know I am.

Green beans blanching. Which I guess. Actually just means boil. For a short time.

I popped them in ice water.

I put them in individual freezer bags in about one pound portions, which is right for the two of us. And I froze them.



I'll give you an update on how they taste after I cook up a mess of 'em. But I bet they'll taste pretty good. Especially if we eat them in front of that fire sitting on that bear skin rug.

And Now It's Summer

I finally made it to the Farmer's Market. Every summer, I think I'm going to go to the Farmer's Market every day they are open and I'm going to buy all these lovely fresh fruits and vegetables and we are going to have them for all our meals and the heavens will open up and a hallelujah chorus will sound because I am the best, the healthiest, the more phenomenal person in the whole universe.


And then I don't make it there. I forget that it's the right day. Or I find I'm too busy to get there. And if you don't get there before early afternoon, forget it. They have packed up and gone home. And I still think that is dumb. Why don't they stay there until, like 6 or 7? Doesn't it seem logical they would sell a whole lot to people who are heading home from work? But, apparently, it just doesn't work like that. I stopped one day at about 4 and the parking lot was empty except for some corn husks and a discarded candy bar wrapper. Probably from someone who stopped to buy fresh vegetables and had to resort to junk food in desperation.


But I finally made it! And I bought tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow squash, new potatoes, a cantaloupe and a watermelon. That was quite a workout getting to my car, let me just tell you. The watermelon may have just possibly been one thing too many. But I managed. I went home for lunch and sliced some tomatoes and put them on a plate with some cottage cheese and put some cut up watermelon in a bowl and that was lunch.


The tomatoes were still warm where they had been sitting in the sun on the farmer's stand. They smelled like sun and fresh air. I took one bite and that warm, red, rich, tart taste filled my mouth.


And it was the taste...of summer.