Little House (Condo) on the Prairie (Boulevard)

[Honeylioness]

03 August 2008

Happy Sunday everyone - thought I would share with you about my "Little House on the Prairie" day yesterday. (Not my name for it - the two girls came up with it).

07:30 am - my friend shows up in her rental (she is visiting from MT) and we go to pick up the two Interns working at my company this year. They are 19 and 20. One is from IN of Hindu parents. the other, also Indian, grew up in the United Arab Emerates. Nice girls and very eager to learn new things - especially anything they consider uniquely American.

08:00 am - We arrive at the local Pick Your Own farm that I frequent a lot. And we head out into the fields. We always go very early and try to leave before the heat gets too bad.

10:00 am - We check out, having picked about 9 lbs of raspberries and 18 lbs of blueberries. And head back to my home.

11:00 am - My kitchen starts to look like a light manufacturing facility. Taught them how to sort the berries and pull out the best ones to be frozen for future use. You lay them out on wax paper covered cookie sheets to freeze individually before putting them into freezer bags. There are three large pots being filled - one with raspberries, one with blueberries, and one with a mix of both. And there is a large canning kettle with water heating for the processing.

01:00 pm - Ooops....I should have told Apoorva that a white shirt was NOT the best choice for this activity!...oh well, if the splatter stains don't come out we told her she could just call it a deliberate new form of tie-dye. I have had to increase the AC due to all the heat being generated by the stove and pots. I am also showing them how to prepare the five pounds of small pickling cucumbers, and two pounds of baby pearl onions I picked up Friday from the Farmer's Market.

03:00 pm - The girls have been returned home and I come back and collapse into a kitchen chair. Gloria is scrubbing out the last pot and I look over my kitchen table. 42 jars of various sizes are cooling filled with blueberry syrup and three kinds of preserves, five jars of pickled pearl onions, and four large jars of garlic dill pickles. Plus the two jars each the girls took home with them. My back and legs are killing me - but even I am amazed at the amount we got done today.

06:00 pm - Gloria and I have finished dinner and are polishing off the last of the wine I opened.

07:30 pm - Just as I was wondering how to politely tell my friend "Hey, it has been a great day - go away now" she grins and says she should go and let me have some alone time. I laugh because she knows me well, and I was in desperate need of alone time.

10:00 pm - After a long shower and some mind rotting T.V. I collapse into bed. I think I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.

Hope everyone had a good weekend.

[Honeylioness]

Ahhhh.... my freezer. One of the best gifts I ever got from my father. Mine is a small upright and I find it is easier to organize - as another poster said, it can be easy to "loose" things in an unorganized chest freezer.



One way of keeping things organized is to use containers - either smallish cardboard boxes or perhaps some open wire container/drawers from a shelving system. One of my aunts does this. Each container holds a specific item - frozen juice, butter, fish etc .... that way she can stack them on top of each other and still find what she needs when she is looking for it.



I use my freezer to stock up on seasonal items or really good deals. For example - my local Costco oftens sells bags with three whole chickens for $0.49/pound. I will buy two or three, cut up the birds, wrap each piece and place them into a large plastic box with a lid I have had for years. Then I only have to grab a few pieces in the morning, place them in the fridge before work and they are ready to go for dinner. As I live alone it means I do not waste meat by making too much or not using it up quickly enough.



The backs, necks, bones from de-boning some of the breasts all go into a plastic bag in the freezer, along with a variety of other cast offs: old limp carrots, onion skins and ends, wilted celery, tops of leeks, runt sized garlic cloves. When the bag is full I dump the contents into a large pot, cover with water and simmer for a couple of hours. Voila! "Free" stock. This is skimmed and cooled and put into quart ziplocks to freeze. Again, easy for one person to grab a bag and make a quick soup or stew when the base is already done.



I also harvest a LOT of berries during the spring and summer alone with vegatables like green beans. I don't wash or pre-cook them, for the beans I just snap the ends. Then you lay the items in a single layer on cookies sheets you have covered with parchmant or waxed paper. Once they are frozen you can store them in freezer bags and they will not clump together - so you can actually grab just a handful of what you need and re-seal the rest. For me, usually by the time I am running low or am out of an item it is the next year and I can go get more.



If I see a great deal, or have a big coupon, for butter, frozen juice, cheese ... I will stock up and stash them in my freezer. Then I do not have to purchase these items for quick a while.



I also will make double or triple batches of cookie dough. My preferred storage method is to prepare a sheet of cookies but NOT bake them, just freeze the drops or balls of dough. Then when I get a craving and have the oven on for dinner, I can grab six "lumps" of chocolate chip dough from a bag in the freezer and pop them into the oven while I eat dinner...then...YUMMMMM.....warm cookies for dessert!!!!