Tag Archives: freezing

Potato Bucket Done, Corn Harvest & a Tomato

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My potato plant was looking poorly and began to turn yellow, so I decided it was time to see if it was productive. I’m happy to report the my potato bucket produced one little potato. Unfortunately, it is too small to eat.  I left the little potato in the garden for any critter that might want a snack.
I don’t think my potato bucket experiment has been a total failure. It solved my curiosity and it produced several blog posts. 😉
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A short time ago, a storm came through and flattened our beautiful corn. About half the crop struggled to stand back up. Some critters feasted on some of the corn. Even though the corn probably needed another few days of ripening, we thought it best to harvest it or we wouldn’t get any to eat.
On the 4th of July we harvested, shucked, blanched, cut-off-the-cob, vacuum packaged and froze 17 bags of corn.
We’re very happy to have the corn frozen and available for many meals to come.
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At last another tomato is finally ripening. It’s so pretty snuggled down in the lush green leaves of the tomato vine. It should be ready soon.

Originally, I kind of wondered if our garden was too small, but it’s proven to be a good size for us. We’ve enjoyed tending our little garden and the veggies are a mighty tasty reward.

Wishing you all a happy harvest!

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Peaches & Cream Corn – Harvest & Freezing

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0-20160807_093914We had a busy Sunday morning. We went to the garden and harvested about 4 dozen ears of Peaches & Cream Sweet corn.

Working together, it didn’t take long to have the corn shucked, cleaned, blanched, cooled, packaged and in the freezer. We have a dozen bags of corn put up and ready for future meals.

Here’s Wishing for all your harvests to be bountiful!02freezingcorn

*We used this method for preparing and freezing our corn:
How to freeze corn – pickyourown.org

*Related post from 7-14-2014 Mostly Corny Post

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Sewing & Juicing

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P1030975bc
Except for doing repairs and making some adjustments, I haven’t sewn anything in a while. I’ve been in the mood to make a wallet or clutch or coupon keeper or whatever you’d like to call it. I chose this pattern ‘McCalls Fashion Accessories M6768’. I’m making the yellow wallet in the pattern photo; mine’s going to be greens & beiges. I’m going to attempt to go by the pattern as close as possible. It’s a real challenge for me to follow a pattern because I always want to make changes (and complicate things.) I hope this wallet works out okay. I’ll post an update and let you know if I made it or tossed it away.

P1030970Last evening, I had a brainstorm of an idea for my tomato juice. If I freeze it in water bottles, it’ll take up less space and can be thawed out for drinking and/or cooking just like the juice frozen in the bowls. My husband liked the idea too. So today after I made and cooled the tomato juice, I poured it in bottles and set it in the freezer. Hopefully it’ll do just fine.
*I’m going to edit this photo into my tomato juicing post as another idea for freezing containers.

That’s all for me at the moment.

I hope you all have an enjoyable rest of the week.

Distracted – ice & snow

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IMG_9095Let me start off with a disclaimer: I realize that there’s regions snowed totally under and you are free to snicker at my snow & ice photos. My warm postive thoughts are with you all. cloudhug Please remember though, that for us, this below zero icy cold snowy weather is still miserable, dangerous and beautiful.

IMG_9068It iced earlier this week and it’s snowed for a couple of days. I find it a bit ironic how I started buying seeds and posting about deciding to have a garden this year and then this crazy weather hits… ~bummer~

Our electric and internet has been blinky, I’m working on crafts and trying to keep myself distracted from not being able to blog or surf and stuff. 

I wanted to try and make a post to let you all know that I’m still around. I’ll be by to visit and comment whenever I can.

I hope you all are keeping warm and safe during these freezing days of winter.snowmanspflwrsln

 

 

Mostly Corny Post

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IMG_5029We had sort of a corny weekend with gardening. We harvested a lot of produce.
My husband harvested all the potatoes and onions over a 2 day period. He had to stop the first evening because after we harvested the corn and squash, he started digging potatoes as the sun was setting.IMG_5078Some of the potatoes are huge.IMG_5196IMG_5118The onions are drying on a table on the back-porch, and the potatoes are drying on garbage bags in my craft room.
My craft room is fast becoming a food-cellar. lolIMG_5152It may not look like a lot of potatoes, but it’s more than plenty for us. After the potatoes dry a couple weeks or more we’ll put them in mesh bags and stack them somewhere…  and then I’ll have my floor back. lol
But I fear my craft table is going to be full quite awhile before I can use it again. So, for now, I’ll use the dining room table for sewing and stuff.

My BFF knew we harvested some corn, so she sent me a link to a video on how to cook and shuck corn using the microwave. She wanted me to try it and see if it would work.
How to cook and shuck corn with the microwave
I was super surprised that yes indeed it does work just like the video says. It took only 4 minutes and there was no silks on the cooked ear of corn. I like that. Here’s a photo of my using the microwave cooking & shucking method. IMG_5105
My husband harvested all the mature ears of corn. We’re not planning on harvesting the rest of the corn when it matures. We’re going leave it for the deer, racoons and other wildlife.
IMG_5005IMG_5135We used the normal method of shucking to prepare our corn for freezing. We’re happy we had about a bushel of corn. We put up 26 bags of corn-off-the-cob.
we used this method:
How to freeze corn – pickyourown.org

Here’s of photo montage of our corny process that we did.

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Click on this photo to see a bigger photo

I put up 4 bags of corn-on-the-cob for our Grandson when he comes to visit.
I used the same method for freezing except I left the corn-on-the-cob. I wrapped the ears individually in cling wrap, put a few ears in a gallon Ziploc vacuum sealer bag, sealed it and put it in the freezer. By wrapping them individually, they won’t be stuck together and I can take out the amount I need to cook.IMG_5186
And so it goes in our neck of the woods. We’ve been busy busy busy.

I hope you all had a good weekend.
Have a super week!
gardeningcouple
spgrnbgln

Green Beans packed & Frozen

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IMG_4109T’is the season to began storing food for the winter. I’m happy that we got 10 packages of green beans packaged and put in the freezer. That’s a lot of good eats. 😉

If you want to know how I package my beans, here’s a link to a website that has a method like we use.  Pick Your Own: How to Freeze Green Beans

0-frebnThe things we do different from pickyourown.org is, we break our beans by hand instead of using a knife
and we use Ziploc Vacuum bags. This has been our favorite vacuum pump for many many years.

I look forward to putting on a pot of green beans in the winter time, cooking them down and reminisce about growing them. lol

I hope you all have a nice rest of the week of enjoyable reminiscing.

 

.madveggie

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