Eight Acres

Avocado season is just drawing to a close and we were given a box of avos by a friend who grows them commercially.  I like avocado as guacamole, but get sick of it after a few avos and I couldn't see us getting through the entire box of them before they went off, so I investigated our options.   Turns out that you can freeze whole avocados  (I also used the DYI vacuum seal from that post, love it!), just cut them in half, remove the stone (and plant it, but maybe not all of them!) and sprinkle with lemon or lime juice to prevent browning.  Then place the halves in a bag and freeze (I don't know why some sites say to freeze on a pan first, just an extra step, don't bother).  To use the avocados, remove them from the bag, defrost (not in the microwave!) and mash.  The best part is you can just use a half, and not have to find something to do with the entire avo.  The texture is a bit different, but ok mashed, rather than sliced and better than wasting th...

Last year I was lazy and froze beans without blanching them.  At least I learnt why you need to blanch - all the beans tasted AWFUL!  So this year I am trying blanching and freezing, and hoping we can use our surplus beans over winter.  I was in a hurry, so I just grabbed the first website I found and followed this method.   It was easier than I expected and I will be interested to see if the beans taste better. The reason for blanching is to degrade the enzymes that cause the beans to decay, even when they're frozen.  Unfortunately this also degrades the good enzymes and heat sensitive vitamins in the beans.  For this reason, drying and fermenting are better options for preserving the beans, but freezing is very convenient. The harvest when I returned from 2 weeks holiday half the beans after I gave some away chilling the beans after blanching freezing the chilled beans on a tray the frozen beans in a bag, ready for longterm storage...

I have to admit that I used to buy a few items in the frozen isle of my supermarket.  I used to buy chips, battered fish, crumbed chicken breasts, frozen veges, pastry, ice cream, pies, frozen meals etc.  It was so handy to be able to just pull them out and reheat them quickly.  Since I discovered real food, and what is in those processed frozen foods,  I don't buy any of that any more, but my freezer is still stuffed full of  convenience  foods.  By that I mean, food that is  convenient  to me :)  Here is a photo of our freezer.  It is starting to get empty now in preparation for our next steer getting butchered, so I wanted to share what it usually looks like before it was too late (until recently it was full floor to ceiling!). In my freezer you will typically find: left over meals so we can grab a quick lunch or dinner, often deliberately or not, we cook far too much and eat the same meal for several days, when we g...