Walking the farm it is quite obvious that we are quickly approaching Summer. Zucchini, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers will all be ready soon, zucchini is already coming in. As we have collards and chard in this week’s box I strongly encourage you to wash, chop and sauté, then stick it into a ziplock and freeze it for later in the summer.
If you put it in the freezer flat, do not over fill the bag, it is actually pretty easy to break it into bits, and this way you can make up a soup and add a little bit of greens. Of course you can also put it into small bags and portion it out. Either way, come August, most of us would be happy to have some prepared greens int he freezer. You could even goes so far as to include parsley and garlic and a little bit of diced carrot and make an almost complete soup or stew base. So often I find delicious recipes for tomatoes that call for some kind of green to go with it, but of course they are out of season for us here at that time.
Parsley added to Pesto keeps it a much brighter green. For 1 cup of Basil add 1/4 cup of Parsley. Pesto can be frozen in ice cube trays and then popped into freezer bags for easy storage. It is important to remember that when we choose to eat seasonally part of what we do is “put things up” as my Grandma used to say. In our modern world, we have many easy options. Pesto takes mere minutes with a food processor (of course if you are a purest you will only make it in a mortar and pestle), dehydrators, freezers, canners, some people even invest in freeze driers. I stick more to the basics, I use a giant pot and boiling water for canning, I air and oven dry herbs, and freeze lots of things. The past few weeks I have really taken advantage of the frozen greens we pre-cooked when loads of stuff came back from the market. It saved me loads of time when cooking for 25 people over the lavender weekend. Not preparing an entire meal, but rather prepping food gives you a lot of flexibility once you are at your destination. Take advantage of what is in your box and bri