[The following is from our friend Dave at Meh.]
My father-in-law enjoys gardening. The truth is, yearly, his backyard’s output ticks up little by little, and now, he grows greater than he may ever use himself, and so he provides a lot of it away to family and friends. Which means, once we go to in the summertime, we get despatched house with three or 4 packing containers of no matter’s prepared for choosing.
Properly, this 12 months, our visits did not coincide with tomato season. Which is a bummer, as a result of we like to make contemporary tomato sauce. We requested if he would not thoughts freezing some for us so we may make sauce and soup all winter. He mentioned he had quite a bit, so how a lot did we wish? We mentioned, nonetheless a lot he may give us, we would take!
Welp, this is an image of the within of our huge basement freezer proper now:
And that is one shelf. There are numerous, many extra all full of vacuum-sealed, frozen tomatoes.
Additionally, some peppers:
Now, will these tomatoes and peppers thaw into completely plump peak-of-the-season variations of themselves? Completely not. However once more, they’re gonna go into tomato sauce or tomato soup or salsa. We’re grinding them up is what I am saying. So who cares what they seem like!
And that tomato sauce? We’ll use it to make some lasagna, and we’ll reduce the leftovers into slices, vacuum seal them individually, and freeze them. Or we’ll have it with spaghetti and meatballs, the surplus of which we’ll additionally vacuum seal and freeze. And that aforementioned salsa? It’s going to be good with the carnitas or beef barbacoa that we’ll make huge batches of, portion out, vacuum seal, and freeze.
Look, having a stocked freezer simply makes life simpler, as a result of when it is 4pm and you are like, “Wait, what’s for dinner tonight?” the reply is not “Takeout” or “Oh, crap, I am going to rush to the shop and get one thing easy to make.” It is, “I am going to seize one thing scrumptious and ready-to-go from the freezer.”
And if you wish to inventory a freezer, you are gonna desire a good vacuum sealer. Like this one.
