The canning/freezing season is now upon us. Every summer is my busy season when it comes to fresh produce. I do a lot of freezing to be able to make healthy smoothies for S all year long. In each smoothie he gets 8 servings of his fruits/vegetables and 1 dairy serving.
When S was a baby I started by making all of his baby food from produce we grew in our garden or what I was able to get at our local farmer’s market. As a baby he ate all kinds of fruits and veggies you can’t find in stores. For example fruits and veggies not normally found in stores he ate would be: cauliflower, red beets, zucchini, summer squash, pumpkins, raspberries, strawberries, cantaloupe, and watermelon. Of course, I made the regular fruits and veggies: broccoli, peas, green beans, carrots, plums, bananas, peaches, pears, applesauce, and I am sure there is more I forgot.
Our first fruit of the year is Strawberries. I bought 11 quarts at the farmer’s market and after S ate a ton in a day and a half I only had 9 quarts left to freeze. So S and I tackled the process of washing, cutting, blending, and pouring of strawberries. I will give a quick step by step in case you’re curious.
- We soaked 1 quart of strawberries at a time in a bowl of water to get all the dirt and grime off of them.
- I cut the tops off, halve them to get the juices flowing, and put them in the blender.
- Since these are homegrown (we get from a local orchard) strawberries, there is no need to add liquid to the blender. Blend away until it is a smooth juice.
- I chose to pour the strawberries through a sieve to get any of the big seeds out. There were so many big seeds this year that I could only pour a little in the sieve and then I had to rinse out all of the seeds because they were clogging up the holes.
- Once that was done I poured them into ice cube trays. I wanted to know how much liquid went into each cube so I knew what amount I was giving S. The ice cube trays are almost exactly 1 oz. each. I filled my 12 blue trays with 16 cubes in each tray so that works out to 192 ounces of strawberry juice. I also filled up 2 ½ more trays for a grand total of 232 ounces.
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Once the cubes are frozen we put them in Ziploc bags labeled with the fruit or veggie and date. I can bag about a tray and half in each bag.
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Strawberries from our own garden (about 2 quarts so far) we washed, cut the tops off and froze whole for S to eat in the winter. We gave him some today to try and he loved them so much. He thought they were popsicles without the sticks. That works for me! So far we have only been able to get 2 quarts out of the garden that haven’t been eaten right away. S eats them as fast as we can pick them.
This is a thick juice so it works well for baby food, but thin enough that when added to water veggies it works out great for smoothies.
The rest of the summer I will continue to post about all of our canning and freezing. I will also post pictures of our garden(s) and how they grow throughout the season and how much produce B gets from the gardens. If history repeats itself we will have 8 foot tomato plants and so much extra produce that our neighbors get burnt out on all the fruits and veggies as much as we do.