Growing Food and Kids

The summer vegetable harvest is slowing down, and the days without fresh squash, tomatoes, and beans straight from the garden are getting closer. But with just a little effort, you can preserve some of summer’s bounty and eat it all year long. Canning and pickling may seem daunting, but anybody can use a freezer (open door, insert food, close door). And while some vegetables, like squash or turnip greens, need to be blanched before they’re frozen, others require hardly any preparation before they’re ready to freeze. Here are a couple of the easiest veggies to freeze (that will taste garden-fresh when thawed):

Peas. We grow pinkeye purplehull peas (similar to blackeyed peas but tastier), but I think this would work with most other peas as well. The peas do have to be shelled, of course, but after that’s done, preserving them is a snap:

1. Look the peas over well and throw out any bad ones (and any worms).

2. Pour the peas into a clean pillowcase (that you don’t need anymore), twist the top closed, and stick them in the freezer.

This would probably work with freezer bags too, but the pillowcase is great because you can pour a whole season’s peas in it and when you’re ready to cook some, you just scoop out what you need. I like using a pillowcase that’s made of thicker cotton (maybe a 250 or 300 thread count); it just seems to keep the peas cozy and fresh. I don’t even wash the peas before I put them in the pillowcase; when I’m ready to cook them, I just scoop out what I need, pour water over them with a little oil, salt and pepper, and let the boiling begin. They taste fresh, even after many months frozen in the pillowcase.

Okra. A friend told me the other day that her family eats lots of okra in the summer but she’s never known how to put it up and save it, so they’ve never eaten it in the winter. When I mentioned I’d been freezing lots of our extra okra this year, she was interested—and thrilled to hear how easy it is. There are just two simple steps:

1. Wash the fresh okra and spread it on a towel to dry.

2. When the okra is mostly dry, drop it into a freezer bag and put it in the freezer.

When you’re ready to use the frozen okra, take out only what you need. I usually slice it for frying or boiling with tomatoes and onions, and after just a few minutes out of the freezer, it’s thawed enough for slicing. And I guarantee it will taste better than the frozen okra you can buy at the store. (One warning: If you want to save time later and chop up the okra before freezing it, resist the urge. The pre-cut okra, after being frozen, just doesn’t taste as good as the okra I’ve frozen whole.)

What fruits and vegetables do you freeze? Which ones would you like to preserve?