Canning, A Lost Art: Mediterranean Mixed Veggies

Welcome back to my canning series! Now that you know how to preserve you're own green beans here's a recipe to help you use them up. One of the recipes I use for frozen green beans the most is my mixed veggie side. It's a great side to serve with a main dish of chicken, rolls and a salad. Which is a very common dinner in our house. Quick and easy definitely is a help when you have little one's scurrying about. This is a recipe that will certainly please everyone at the table and that guests will rave about.

Mediterranean Mixed Veggies

1 Cup Green beans
1 Cup Squash (Yellow squash and Zucchini are best for this recipe)
1/2 large onion, sliced
1/2 head garlic, sliced
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Rosemary
Parmesan Cheese
Mozzarella Cheese

1. Preheat your oven to 375º F.
2. Cut your squash into bite size pieces. If using a portion of your frozen green beans, do not defrost put strait on the tray frozen.
3. Lay out the onion and garlic on the baking sheet drizzle with olive oil and cover your baking sheet with foil. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. This will cause the onion and garlic to become soft and very flavorful. 
4. Now that your onion and garlic are baked add your squash and green beans. Sprinkle vegetables with salt and pepper till you have a very thin layer covering all of the vegetables. Then with a spatula turn the vegetables till they're well coated in spices. 
5. Cook in the oven for 8 minutes, pull out and turn the vegetables, sprinkle lightly with parmesan and mozzarella cheese.
6. Put back in the oven for 4 more minutes or until the cheese is melted.
7. Put the vegetables on a serving tray or bowl and sprinkle with fresh Rosemary. If using dry Rosemary cook in the oven with the vegetables.

This recipe is also great with mushrooms however my husband not only hates mushrooms but is "allergic" to them. So I'm very mushroom deprived. Well I hope you enjoyed this recipe and come back next week for another delicious recipe using your frozen green beans!

Canning A Lost Art: Freezing Green Beans

First up in the canning series is Green Beans. As a kid we not only canned these green beans but we picked them too! If you can find a farm where they let you pick your own produce it's usually much cheaper. So as usual we were our mom's labor force: we picked, cleaned, and snapped boxes full of green beans. My mom would always can green beans, but I found growing up that I hated the taste and texture of them. I thought for the longest time that I hated green beans in general. Then I tried them frozen, and it changed my world. It tasted so much like fresh that I've never looked back. Now green beans is a staple vegetable in our home that everyone enjoys.

Freezing green beans is very simple that anyone can do it. You don't need any special tools or equipment. Here's what you'll need:

1 large pot
1 large bowl
Ice
2 large spoons or tongs
Ziploc quart freezer bags
Green Beans

Green bean season ranges from July to August, and of course it varies for different zones. You could find green beans at your local grocery store on sale; however, I prefer to buy from a local farm. They tend to have better quality, fresher produce and cheaper prices. Plus most farms give you a discount for buying in bulk. I was able to find a large box in my region for $32, which yielded enough green beans to last our family of three for a year.

After you have your green beans, make sure to keep them refrigerated if you're not going to work with them right away. But do so quickly: like all fresh produce they will go bad quickly.

First step in freezing green beans is cleaning. I used this cleaning ratio that I found here. It worked like a charm! It's really great for green beans because it's really tedious washing every single bean by hand. I let them soak in this solution for 20-30 minutes. Then I rinsed well and kept them in bowls.

Next you need to snap off the end that was attached to the plant. The other end that comes to a long point you can keep on or snap off. It depends on your preference, but a lot of the plants nutrition is held in this part of the bean. I personally don't like to chew on just the skin of the green bean so I discard any "flat" or what my husband calls "meatless" green beans. When you snap the end off you will be able to see that there is a fleshy center. If not, and the bean goes flat when you squeeze it, discard it. Now is the time to snap the beans into the size you want as well.

Now that all your beans are cleaned and snapped it's time to blanch. Blanching is boiling or steaming vegetables for a short amount of time. Doing this stops enzyme's from breaking down the food which would cause loss of taste and texture. It also kills bacteria that could be harmful when you eat it. Make sure to not over blanch, this will cause the vegetables to become mushy and dark in color.

Fill a large pot half full with water. Bring water to a rapid boil. Add green beans, being careful to not over crowd the pot. The water will not boil if it's over crowded. The blanching time starts when the water comes back to a boil, which should only take about a minute. For green beans, blanching time is 3 minutes.

After you blanch quickly transfer your beans with your tongs into a bowl of ice water and let sit for 5 minutes. This will stop the cooking process.

Pull them out of the ice water and lay on a towel to dry. They should now be a bright grass green and still crisp, just slightly softer then fresh. If any come out looking brown or avocado green you probably over blanched and they might not be as tasty. The avocado green beans were always what my mom's canned green beans looked like. Yuck!

If you're not in a hurry you can lay the green beans out on a dry towel to air dry. But if you're like me, I didn't want to drag it out another day. So I blotted the green beans dry with a paper towel.

After all that's done pack single serving's for yourself or your family into quart ziploc bags. Label with the month and year and seal pushing out as much air as possible. Voila! Now you have frozen green beans to last you all year long. After all was done that large box yielded 30 14 oz bags of green beans. That's about $1.06 per bag or 0.076 cents per oz. Not bad at all!

Well thanks for stopping by, come back next week and I'll share two of my favorite recipes that use your newly frozen green beans!

Canning & Freezing Food: A Lost Art

It's that time of year! Canning time. It's the time that for just a few short months my childhood home was filled with aroma's sweet and bitter. Where my mother had us snapping beans, peeling apples, poking pickles and smashing strawberries. Our house was transformed into a finely tuned canning factory. We all had a job to do and nothing less then perfection was acceptable. Whenever my two sister's, myself or my brother would complain my mother would say, and I quote "Why do you think I had you kids? So you could be my slaves!" A part of me kind of believed her, even if she did smirk. She worked us hard, but with that work we learned. And as much as we hated it, we still managed to have fun. We ended up being grateful in the end.

Now every year my sister's and I all come together, cramming into one of our houses small kitchen's to can and preserve food for the upcoming year. Like our mother before us, everyone has a job. Whether to taste test, splash in cleaning water, or stuff food in jars. Even the little kids get to help, might as well while they still think it's fun!

Over the next few weeks I will be sharing how to preserve, store and use a variety of different foods. What I'll be posting are common foods that my family enjoys and eat often enough that we have to restock every year. These are foods that you can find at the store and that you usually buy canned or frozen! Some of these are so easy to do, you'll be amazed you didn't do it sooner.

Before we get started I want to discuss the benefits of canning and freezing you're own food. The title of this post is called "A Lost Art" for a reason. There are few people that still preserve their own food. We have been wrapped up in the convenience of the convenience store! Back in the day there was no one-stop shopping. You went to your cupboard for a can of tomatoes not a grocery shelf. Here are a few reasons to bring canning and freezing food back into your home.

1. The Price: It is simply outrageous what they charge for a can of corn these days, 97 cents! Really? I understand, you have to pay for the expensive machinery, pay the workers, pay shipping fees. Well all of that cuts into your pocket. Cut out the middle man and save some money. At it's peak season you can get an ear of corn for around 30 cents, depending on the region it goes higher or lower. A pint sized jar of corn will fit two ears of corn. That's roughly 60 cents per jar. A pint is 16 oz where a can of corn at the store is 15 oz. There are some initial fees for a beginner. A jar will cost about a dollar to buy, but here's the best thing. You can use it over and over again. I'm using jars that my mom has been using for years! They still work great!
2. Knowledge: What is in your food, really? When you can and freeze your own food you're in control of what you're eating. Companies use a lot of chemicals and preservatives to extend the shelf life of food. I don't know about you but I don't want to eat "mystery", just food. Just a bit healthier was never bad in my book.
3. Food Storage: Wait? The Hurricane's coming tomorrow! Better go stock up, oops... Natural disaster's or just a tight month, this will come in handy! I lived in Texas for ten plus years and let me tell you, the weather there certainly teaches you a lesson of preparedness. You don't want to be caught without food for a few days. Food storage might sound like an old fashioned idea, but in tough times it helps to know that you're set if disaster strikes. Canning is definitely a step towards becoming more secure in your own home.

Hope you enjoyed the first in a series of posts and my first post ever! Come back soon and happy blogging!