Freezer 3/4 full

So I have been slow to report on my latest step in preparing for winter--freezing! Sadly, I have no pictures of my efforts from the last two weekends. Right after I canned the tomatoes, I took a big step forward in my endeavor to preserve food for the winter--I bought a stand-alone freezer. Until this point, I had been freezing stuff in the 'fridge freezer. I had told myself when I filled that freezer, I could permit myself to buy the stand-alone freezer. The problem is that we live in an apartment with no basement or garage or laundry room where I could hide this freezer. And the only spot in the kitchen where was room was next to the radiator... So after some debate, we decided on placing it in a corner of the dining room. Considering that the walls are white and the freezer is white, it doesn't look too bad. The sound of it running makes me think of the sound our family's VCR made when it was taping a show. Random, I know. 

Anyway, I didn't really mean to talk about the freezer, I wanted to talk about all of the yummy things that are in my freezer. The most prevalent items are bell peppers and blueberries, because they are SO EASY! 

When I was at the farmers' market buying my bushel of peppers (about 25-30 peppers), the couple next to me talked about how they just throw the peppers in whole and cut them when they use them. I thought this was wonderful news--I didn't have to clean and cut 30 peppers! We though that they would take up more space, as compared with cutting the peppers and putting them in boxes, so I did both, to compare. I was able to fit 3 sliced peppers in one of my freezer boxes. Two of these boxes weren't much smaller than a freezer bag with 6 peppers whole, so I am glad I decided to do a mix of both. 

Blueberries are even easier--I dumped them into the freezer box straight from the farmers' market basket, and then put the boxes straight into the freezer. No washing, no sorting. Apparently washing them before you freeze makes the skins tougher. I just wash them to thaw them when they come out of the freezer.  Most of the blueberries I froze are wild blueberries. They taste much different that the cultivated blueberries I had growing up in Indiana. The wild blueberries are more expensive, but they are worth it for their intense sweetness! 

I have also blanched and froze the kernels from 20 ears of corn (these ears are giant so I got more than a cup of corn from each ear) making for 22 cups of corn. When I moved to Quebec, I was happy to discover that the sweet corn here was just as yummy as that of Indiana. There is also broccoli, swiss chard, green beans, and zucchini (grated for cakes and breads) in the freezer, but none in any huge quantity, because they take more time to do and I haven't had much time. 

I also roasted some veggies and put them in the freezer, but that is for another day!! I hope this post wasn't too boring--I wanted to get an inventory out there before I forgot it all. I did make a list, but already I am not really understanding my notes on my list...

Thirty pounds of tomatoes

This weekend I had my first big adventure with this whole endeavor to eat locally--I canned tomatoes. Thirty pounds of them. An entire bushel. I am still pretty impressed myself, that I actually did it, and didn't chicken out somewhere in the process. I kinda felt like a huge nerd doing it. But as MK said, my lack of local friends is bringing out my Martha Stewart skills. 

I started by heading to Marché Jean-Talon with my very handy trolley (such a good investment). It looked like I had picked the right time to buy my tomatoes--they were everywhere! In strolling the aisles, I discovered herbicide-free tomatoes! I have no idea if they used insecticides, but at least there was one less chemical to contend with. I loaded my cart with the bushel of tomatoes for only $18. 

Once I was back home, I learned just how many tomatoes a bushel makes! My kitchen was full of them. And I had to begin the process of skinning, chopping, cooking, and canning all of these tomatoes. Thankfully, I had the National Center for Home Food Preservation to help me along with clear instructions on preparing the crushed tomatoes and then canning them. While washing the tomatoes, I made a little X with my knife in the bottom of each tomato.  This helped them split more easily when they were in the boiling water--I found that they didn't split well on their own. The skinning part was easy--and actually kind of fun. I didn't so much enjoy quartering the tomatoes, because it seemed to take FOR-EV-ER. The cooking part didn't take very much time--about 10 min. Then into the jars they went. With my first batch, I didn't have a canning funnel, which meant tomatoes went everywhere. I definitely recommend a canning funnel (it has a wide, short mouth at the bottom). I don't have a canning pot, but I do have a 10 L pot from Ikea that held just enough water to cover the pint jars that I used. The rattling of the jars on the bottom of the pan was a bit annoying, but not annoying enough to run out and buy a canning pot. 

So my Saturday's efforts left me with 16 pint jars (500 ml) of tomatoes. I am quite pleased. I use a lot of canned tomatoes in the winter, so I don't know how far these will take me, but at least I will be purchasing far fewer cans of tomatoes this winter. $18 worth of tomatoes left me with 16 pints of fresh, locally grown tomatoes--I think that is a steal! 

Eating locally to to save myself from going loco

It's harvest time! A time of year when it is easy to plan your meals around fresh local produce because it is everywhere. I love seeing all of the tomatoes, peppers, corn, eggplant, beans, oh I can't even begin to list all of the yummy bounty available at the market. All of this plenty is actually a bit anxiety inducing for me, for two reasons. One, there are so many good things to eat, I can't decide what to make for dinner. Two, it signals the end of summer, the end of the growing season, and the start of -- I dread it ever year -- no local produce. 

Long before eating local became the cool thing to do, I shunned out of season tomatoes because I thought they were, well, to put it bluntly, gross. Same for those mutant, California grown strawberries you can find in the middle of winter.  Slowly, over the past five years, I have been eating more and more seasonally. And this past winter, I contemplated what it would be like to really eat locally, even in winter, in Quebec. 

This past winter was a tough one for me because it was so dang long! To make a long story short, my mental health wasn't in tip top shape, and I had a difficult time eating well-balanced meals because I couldn't stand the sad, imported produce in the grocery aisles. Then I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. She came to speak in Montreal, both her book and talk inspired me. While I don't have the Appalachian farm like her, I do have a farmers' market just up the street. I have decided to freeze and can my way to delicious meals all winter long. I have been trying to get a blog going now for a long time, but never found the proper theme. But now I kinda, sorta, have it, at least something to start me, for now. 

My first post

So, here it goes! I have been thinking about a blog for over a year now. What really kept me from starting one was the name. Everyone has cute and clever blog names, and I just could not think of one. Nicknames have never really stuck to me, and when I was yearbook editor, I was never the one to come up with the captions on the pictures. I love words, but witty names and remarks have never been my strong suit. Back in 1995 when we first got AOL, I chose JillyB3 as my screen name (because JillyB was already taken and I liked how the "three" rhymed). I certainly had no idea that I would have been better off picking something more clever, since the name would be with me for so long.

So after months and months of agonizing over names, I finally decided that I should just stick to my own real first name. It may not be original, but it is me, nothing fake, nothing false, nothing forced.