Blanching!

Hi all,

Sorry for the hiccup in service last week. Technology issues.

But we're back this week with new box contents: peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and sweet corn this week, with a possible acorn or spaghetti squash, too.

Food World News? Time for Lunch is approaching rapidly! Here's the map with links to Missouri Eat-Ins:

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/campaign/time_for_lunch-eat_ins_by_state/Missouri/

In lieu of a recipe, I thought I would share a strategy we use every year about this time, when we're too busy to properly cook up all the goodness from the CSA and Farmer's Market. We blanch most of our produce and freeze it. This strategy does NOT work with squash, cucumbers, peppers, onions, potatoes, or eggplants, but it's great for just about everything else, including some of those big tough root veggies, as my freezer can attest.

Last week alone, we blanched beans, tomatoes, and corn. Here's the procedure:

1. Boil water in the biggest pot you own.

2. Prepare the vegetables to be blanched (wash them, husk them, tail them, and so on, as necessary). For really big veggies like celeriac or beets, peel them and then cut them into chunks.

3. Add the vegetables (only one kind at a time) to the pot. The trick here is not to overfill the pot. Be sure to leave room for the water to circulate amongst all the veggies.

4. Wait, in most cases, for a color change to take place. With tomatoes, watch for the skin to start splitting. It should take 2-4 minutes, maybe a bit more for corn or beets.

5. Once the color has changed uniformly, pull the veggies and let them cool.

6. Prepare the veggies for freezing by cutting corn from the cob, skinning and coring tomatoes, and portioning out everything into freezer-safe containers.

7. Repeat with the next batch of veggies.

You are, of course, welcome to change the water between vegetable types, but we generally find if we start with the least messy stuff (corn or beans) and move to the more messy stuff (beets or tomatoes), we can use the same water.

See you next week!
;-)M