What are You Eating from the Garden?

Do NOT try dehydrating onions!!! They burned when I did it. BUT, they freeze really well!! I did that when they was a temporary shortage here, and I found stock at a different store. I triple bagged them bc they stunk up the freezer. o_O
ALL peppers dehydrate great, but the sweet peppers lose their flavor after a year.
Just some fyi from my dehydrating. :)
 
ducks4you said:
Do NOT try dehydrating onions!!! They burned when I did it.
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How did you manage to do that? What did you do? Did you use a dehydrator or your oven? I can't imagine my dehydrator burning anything. You must be really talented!

I've dehydrated onions but prefer to freeze them. I chop them and put them in a thin layer on a baking sheet in the freezer. After they are frozen I put them in a vacuum bag and vacuum-seal them, then put them back in the freezer for long term storage. When I use them I put them in a zip-loc type bag so I can take put how much I need. If you try long term storage in zip-loc bags they get ice crystals.
 
canning onions as a relish would work good too. could also combine them with garlic for even more pep. hot peppers, etc. just make sure you grind them fine enough and there is enough vinegar and sugar in them and they should can fine and keep for a few years. none of those would be poor additions to any bbq sauce or many other dishes.
 
squash and strawberries from the freezer.

some years ago i smashed a bunch of later season strawberries that were starting to ferment and put those in the freezer thinking that the freezer would stop them from fermenting any more. that turned out to be a wrong assumption and when i started trying to use them the next winter they were not good. they were all glopped together and it was like trying to eat a strawberry wine flavored sponge. to say the least those strawberries ended up being worm food.

lat year i tried various amounts of sugar to see if there was some lower limit where they would still be preserved vs. those that cold fermented. normally for making strawberry freezer jam the recipe calls for quite a bit of sugar and then there is some added lemon juice which i like a lot so i usually add extra and pectin. per batch the recipe is four cups of sugar to two cups of mashed strawberries - that's a lot of sugar! i'm trying to cut down on how much of that i'm eating. i do not add any pectin. this is just a way to freeze the strawberries so that the flavor comes out close enough to freezer jam without having to spend a lot of money on pectin.

so far all of the variations that have included some sugar have come out of the freezer ok while a few of the jars with no added sugar did ferment. in my notes and on the lid of the jars i wrote down some batch numbers so i can tell which had how much sugar. the experiment will continue this coming strawberry season if we get enough to put up as i will keep trying to see how low it will still work and prevent the cold ferment. my notes have to be improved so we'll keep on learning. :)

the other thing we're eating from the garden are bread and butter pickles. Mom only uses these for a certain recipe so i put up a case of pints for her to use. we opened a jar the other day for her to use and they're still good, but very sweet. someone gave us a jar a few years ago of these kind of pickles and they actually put a piece of bread on top of the pickles in the jar - neither of us could bring ourselves to eat them. it just didn't seem like a great idea...
 
flowerbug said:
squash and strawberries from the freezer.

some years ago i smashed a bunch of later season strawberries that were starting to ferment and put those in the freezer thinking that the freezer would stop them from fermenting any more. that turned out to be a wrong assumption and when i started trying to use them the next winter they were not good. they were all glopped together and it was like trying to eat a strawberry wine flavored sponge. to say the least those strawberries ended up being worm food.

lat year i tried various amounts of sugar to see if there was some lower limit where they would still be preserved vs. those that cold fermented. normally for making strawberry freezer jam the recipe calls for quite a bit of sugar and then there is some added lemon juice which i like a lot so i usually add extra and pectin. per batch the recipe is four cups of sugar to two cups of mashed strawberries - that's a lot of sugar! i'm trying to cut down on how much of that i'm eating. i do not add any pectin. this is just a way to freeze the strawberries so that the flavor comes out close enough to freezer jam without having to spend a lot of money on pectin.

so far all of the variations that have included some sugar have come out of the freezer ok while a few of the jars with no added sugar did ferment. in my notes and on the lid of the jars i wrote down some batch numbers so i can tell which had how much sugar. the experiment will continue this coming strawberry season if we get enough to put up as i will keep trying to see how low it will still work and prevent the cold ferment. my notes have to be improved so we'll keep on learning. :)

the other thing we're eating from the garden are bread and butter pickles. Mom only uses these for a certain recipe so i put up a case of pints for her to use. we opened a jar the other day for her to use and they're still good, but very sweet. someone gave us a jar a few years ago of these kind of pickles and they actually put a piece of bread on top of the pickles in the jar - neither of us could bring ourselves to eat them. it just didn't seem like a great idea...
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Have you considered freezing the strawberries whole? They need no other preservation when whole.

I've not made jam in years (decades), but I see a Honey-Strawberry Jam recipe that I made as freezer jam in the past - from Rodale's Stocking Up III. It calls for 1.75 cups honey to 2 quarts whole strawberries (4 cups stemmed and crushed). Still a lot of sugar. If you're interested in the recipe, I'd be happy to type it up for you.
 
meadow said:
Have you considered freezing the strawberries whole? They need no other preservation when whole.
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yes, they take up more space when whole and we're limited on freezer space. a lot of pints of sliced berries fit in the back of the bottom shelf. bags of whole strawberries might fit back there but i don't think i'd get much more than half the volume of berries.


meadow said:
I've not made jam in years (decades), but I see a Honey-Strawberry Jam recipe that I made as freezer jam in the past - from Rodale's Stocking Up III. It calls for 1.75 cups honey to 2 quarts whole strawberries (4 cups stemmed and crushed). Still a lot of sugar. If you're interested in the recipe, I'd be happy to type it up for you.
Click to expand...

i'm mostly happy with the recipe i'm using i just need to tune it one more season to see how low i can go - i think 1/8 - 1/4 cup of sugar is close to working and acceptable to me for taste which is much less than 4 cups of sugar. it's not jam, but i don't care if it is runny or not - more important to me is the flavor and that the ingredients be preserved until i thaw them out and use them for shortcakes or put them on something else. :) the last jar i had was pretty good. :)

honey is an expensive ingredient here so it is rare i would ever have enough for using in baking or preserving.
 
Zucchini Bread.

For a second breakfast :).

Looking through the freezer yesterday - lots of tomato pasta sauce. We need to be cooking more pasta.

Steve
brought what has to be the last kabocha squash out of the basement. hoping that it is still good
 
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