You have heard my lament about planting too many squash plants. I came across a method of freezing grated zucchini to use later for zucchini bread. I found two large zucchini this morning, so I'm going to grate them, freeze them, and we'll have zucchini bread in December! It's really simple--grate the washed and dried zucchini (no need to peel), put in 2 cup freezer containers, and pop in the freezer. My recipe calls for 2 cups of squash, but you can freeze in any amount you like. Thaw before adding to recipe, and drain off any liquid if there is any.
I lurve zucchini bread, Jane. Thanks for the tip. Mart, you may have to send a marine corps expeditionary force to locate and extract your lurking frozen zucchini’s.
Every once in a while I go "freezer foraging" to see what has been moved to the back, forgotten, or overlooked. My dear long-suffering husband occasionally looks at the freezer contents, and asks if we are preparing for an invasion of hungry people, or if we are supposed to eat all this ourselves. I tell him "whatever," we are prepared!
Because one of the main goals of our gardening hobby is to preserve in the freezer enough food for the coming year. Freezing it in is all well and good, but you have to be able to find what you need ... sometimes in a hurry. Our freezer inventory is organised internally and externally. You will see what I mean in a moment. To begin with, we organise our frozen goods into groups and place them in large, clear plastic bags...with a written label. All this is necessary because some things like Swiss chard and spinach look similar when in their little zip lock bags. So, our inventory are a collection of large bags in several drawers. That is Thing One. Thing Two is the externals. We keep a list on the outside of the freezer showing what and how much is in the freezer. We just mark down when we remove something, that way we always have a good idea of how many bags of what are in the freezer. We just keep using the A-4 until both sides are full. Here is the backside of the above sheet. Waste not, want not...right? Things start going sideways a bit and the markings look odd because of the challenging angle that we have to write on. It is a bit low, especially for me. Y’know though— no matter how careful we are, it never comes out 100% correct. Sigh. You may notice that some words on the list are in English and some are in Dutch. We often incorporate English words in our language at home; but in this case, sometimes a dutch word is longer than an english one. For example the dutch word for “pea” is “doperwtje”. We try and keep it simple and swift. I don’t expect that anyone on here would be as neurotic as we are, but this system works for us.
Good heavens to Betsy, you are super organized! I wish I had the "intestinal fortitude" to be so on top of things, but I'll likely just keep freezer foraging.
Keeping a list on the freezer is really clever! I should do that. The main things taking up room in ours- chicken thighs bought in bulk (for Rufus the dog) tomato sauce pumpkin and squash, some as cubes and some puree tart cherry pie filling dog food meals ' i make 9 days supply, refrigerate half and freeze half from each batch. beans mixed vegetables peas spinach zucchini then a lot of odds and ends. I used to make freezer jams but last year I learned canning. That helped a lot, for jams and fruits. I canned tomato sauce but didn't like it so went back to frozen. The canned tasted too sour due to adding lemon juice as directed by USDA method, and tasted overcooked too.
Well done Sjeord and Marlingardener, I don't need to make a list for my freezers because I don't cook the meals and freeze them. It's just veg, fruit, cooked meats, bread that's wholemeal and white. Prepared fish, made up stuffing and ice cream. I put the same sort of things in the same drawers and the top compartment for odd things and the Ice cream.
I do the same thing with zucchini as well as pumpkin. I try to keep a running list of whats in my freezer, but somehow it doesn't seem to get updated regularly. Which reminds me ... I am due for a freezer cleanout!
