Sunday, September 2, 2012

From garden to Food storage!

 So our garden has been abundantly successful this season!  The corner counter in our kitchen has looked like this pretty much all summer...

The zuchini and tomatoes of course from our garden, and the other assorted clutter from our busy hectic trip filled fun during the summer :)
 Never planting zucchini before, we really had no idea how great it grows here, and how much we would end up with this summer!  Last summer a lot of our food went to waste just because I had no idea what to do with it!  This summer there has been a lot of effort put into making sure we don't waste this food that is such a blessing to have! 





























With our abundance of tomatoes we made a small batch of Salsa which is so yummy! (hopefully I'm making another batch soon.  Grow tomatoes grow!)







We also dehydrated a bunch of cherry tomatoes.  First we washed them, then blanched them to remove the skins.  ( a whole lot of work with cherry tomatoes!)










Then sliced them in half to dehydrate.  It was a lot of work, but they will be really good in stews and soups later on in the winter!
Luckily I had a really patient helper!  He's amazing :)  We also blended more tomatoes into a spaghetti sauce and froze a bunch of bags of that.  We shredded a ton of zucchini and froze that for zucchini bread and cakes, brownies etc during the winter! 



This has been a fun garden year, but wow so much work!!


2 comments:

Tina said...

That is just awesome! You have probably saved so much money, and will save even more money during the winter months with your storage. Plus, healthy, healthy. Do you guys have a dehydrator, or were you able to borrow it from somebody else?
Miss you guys!

Anonymous said...

We saved both of our birthday money from Mom and Dad and bought it this spring. We've LOVED having it. We've only made jerky with it once, but it was amazing. My favorite so far is dehydrated Granny Smith Apples with cinnamon sprinkled on it. So tangy and good! Miss you guys :)