Hey there,
The summer is winding down, the mornings are cool and the kids are back at school. Cool weather often has me thinking about preparing and storing the abundance of summer. Over the weekend I had the kids helping grind up zucchini for muffins and future soups and stews, as well as slicing up more zucchini and eggplant for the freezer.
There are a lot of great websites and recipes to help use up extra veggies, and it can be a simple as chopping up and throwing in the freezer, no blanching required. Some of the easiest to just throw in the freezer with out any real work is chard and kale, and surprisingly peeled garlic. Take out the rib of the kale, rough chop so you can cram it into a bag, then pop in the freezer. Now any time you need kale for a recipe, pull the frozen ball out of the bag, chop off what you need and throw it back it. Do the same with chard, and for the garlic, simply peel, place in a bag and throw in the freezer. Now when you are cooking with garlic, just pop the frozen garlic in. Garlic already lasts a while through the winter, but this way, any extra garlic you have will last months after the garlic stored in the cupboard goes to puffs.
Another idea we used to curb waste and make little bits go further, is having a coffee can in the freezer that we would add veggie bits and beef or chicken bones from our meals. Once the can is full, you have enough to make some stock for soups.
