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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Broccoli, Carrots and Candle Wax:

What a busy morning it has been!  I did a lot of multi-tasking and I got a lot done.  I printed off 150 pages of research materials for my Early Oregon Series and I started a soup in the crock pot.  I also worked on freezing some veggi's.

It isn't that any of what I did was hard, it was all super easy.  It just took a bit of time.  There is supposed to be a vegetable shortage this year, so the price of vegetables are predicted to go way up.  Before, I would have looked at a 25 lb. bag of carrots for $9.00 and thought, we'll never use those up!  And I wouldn't have bought them, even though they were really cheap. I am now trying to figure out how to preserve vegetables without waiting for the summer harvest and driving out to the farm.  I want to do this on my terms.  Like always.

One three pound bag of broccoli florets from Costco cost me around $4.00 last week.  I decided to blanch and freeze them, and see how much that would give me:



Way so easy!  First, steam them for about 5 minutes.


Second, put a quart sized Ziplock Freezer bag in a bowl to help steady the bag.  Fill the bag up with the hot broccoli.  Man, look at those tongs!  I guess I should use a bit of Stain Bully on them too.


That big bag gave me four little bags.  I let them cool off for a bit, and then sealed them, squeezing the air out as I went.  If I wasn't out of gallon-sized Ziplocks, I would have placed the smaller bags inside of the gallon bag.  But I think they will be just fine this way too.

Remember those carrots from last week ... the 12.5 pounds that I dehydrated?  I showed them to you the other day, but this is how they turned out:

  
Well, this morning I decided to go ahead and slice and freeze the other 12.5 lbs of carrots that were leftover:


I did everything the same as I did with the broccoli ... steamed, packed and then put everything into the freezer:

I don't know about you, but I think that these look much yummier than the dehydrated ones do.  They do take up more room though.

As I was doing the veggi thing, and keeping my printing project going, I was melting the wax from our old candles and filling up jam jars with the wax.  I still don't have any wicks, but it is easy enough to melt these back down and stick wicks into them:


Here is the link to a post I did last April about the ins-and-outs of this little project:  Melting and Re-Using Candle Wax


Have a wonderful day, and God bless!


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4 comments:

Lynn said...

I love your thrifty-ness! I've done the same thing with vegetables - need to do it more often. Love the idea of the candle wax!

Donnie said...

We'll be heading back to NC in about 3 weeks so we're eating everything we have here in Florida so we won't have to drag it with us. You are being very well organized. Good for you.

Lisa Ricard Claro said...

You are amazing. You can't see me, but I'm genuflecting in awe at your industriousness. How do you do it all?

Oregon Gifts of Comfort and Joy said...

Thanks, Lynn, Donnie and Lisa!

Lisa, all I can say is that if you took a picture of everything you did all day long, we would all be genuflecting to you! My hardest job on most days is letting the dogs in and out.

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