Stored Food

I am still in the Big City and thus away from the Tiny House.  I thought I might as well put myself to good use while I am here and get some food squirrelled away for winter.  Put away a little over 2 bushels of tomatoes yesterday.  Some mine and some from a farmer down the road from here.  I used to can a lot of them but these days I freeze most of them whole.  I still like to condense and can them but I have not done these yet.  I want to use my own tomatoes for that.  I like them done with the mixed heirloom varieties about 10% of those lovely sharp black ones make for a tasty mix.

I picked up the additional tomatoes when I went to pick up farm fresh peaches.  I bought, sliced up and froze a half a bushel of them which I leave the skins on.  I chose not to can any this year.  They taste great but there is so much sugar in them and I am trying to get away from this.  Also put away three bags of grated zucchini for warm winter loaves and alternately chopped up some plums, bananas and peaches in small bits and froze these in one cup bags for smoothies.

The two longer jobs were the boiling down tomatoes for condensed herb and garlic starters.  I like to boil the salted tomatoes down until it is almost to a paste (I leave the skins and seeds in).  When it was the thickness I added  about 1 cup of fresh garlic, two cups of minced parsley, 2 cups of minced basil and take it off the heat.  Then I put about a third of a cup in silicon muffin cups and freeze them.  I made 24 portions of this (luck not planned).  I pulled them out of the cups today and froze them individually.  These are perfect for throwing together a quick pasta sauce meal for the two of us.  I do this with a few frozen tomatoes.  The skin rolls right off these frozen jewels if you run a bit of hot water on them.  I cook them only enough to be able to smash them up, then one of the starters, a quarter cup of grape seed oil and then you can add gnocchi right in the sauce when it is nearly cooked. Sometimes I add pine nuts, a few raisins, oregano, onions, other fresh veg – whatever I have on hand and feel like really.  These little guys make for some seriously fast/slow food!  Takes about 15 minutes from freezer to table.

Actually, after all the food prep during the day I did not want to get into something elaborate, so we had this for dinner last night!

All this said, I have a freezer here in the city.  At THO I do not.  When I am there, I will have to go back to canning everything.  Makes for a little more work on prep days but still when you get this all done, there is no reason that I can’t have fast/slow food ready for use in a root cellar.  I just have to build me a cellar!