Living the Pantry Lifestyle

Garden candy...

I continue to expand my culinary "repertoire" just a little at a time.  Especially ethnic foods that are fresh, seasonal, and inexpensive.  Some may remember my plan to purchase sumac (a Middle Eastern spice) which is used in some of the recipes I want to make. 

The owner of my favorite gourmet shop told me I could probably buy it at the Asian Market, where I found a large bag for just a few dollars!  One of the benefits of living in a multicultural university town.

In a very serendipitous coincidence, The Create Channel just started showing Cooking With Julie Taboulie... which is all about the cooking of Lebanon... where they use a lot of sumac.  I've only seen a couple episodes but so far I like it a lot.  You can view them... here.

I really wanted to can some tomatoes this year, with plenty coming in from the organic farm.  However, I'm still not feeling the best and not up to canning this year. Sooo... I was concerned that the excess tomatoes would go into the compost instead of in the pantry.

Then I remembered an article about freezing tomatoes and did a Google search to find if that would work for my freezer pantry.  Indeed it would!  So Thursday morning I washed, dried, and prepared the tomatoes for freezing (deciding to leave the skin on) and then placed them on a baking tray to flash freeze in the deep freeze.

I set the timer for five hours... for if I do not set the timer, a week may go by before I remember them!

Later that afternoon, the frozen tomatoes were divided between four plastic bags and labeled.  Then two of those bags were each slipped into a gallon size Ziploc bag for further protection.  They are now in the deep freeze to be used for soups and stews this winter... plus Hubby brought even more home from the farm that will be frozen this weekend.

Let's see, what else did I prepare for the freezer pantry this week?

Oh, yes... I also Googled various ways to use nasturtiums and found a few "recipes" for nasturtium butter.  So on Thursday I also gently washed nasturtiums I'd picked that morning along with some of the leaves and placed them on a towel.  I patted them dry but also left them to air dry further while a stick of butter was left out to soften on the counter.

When all were ready, I pulled the nasturtium petals into small pieces, rolled up and "sliced" the leaves, and placed them in a bowl with the softened butter.  After they were carefully blended, I spooned the mixture onto cling wrap paper and formed it into a log which went into the freezer.

As soon as it was frozen nicely, it was labeled and slipped into a Ziploc bag to protect it in the freezer.  I plan to make a few more herb butters for the freezer, too.  Easy...

What else did I put in my freezer pantry?  Corn on the cob!  I remembered a commenter here saying one does not have to blanch corn for freezing if it is frozen in the husk.  I did a little research and found quite a few people online had success with this method.

Sooo... I placed the corn cobs in their husk in a freezer bag and then sealed it up and placed them in the deep freeze.   I hope this works well as it makes it so easy to freeze freshly picked corn.

Once again realizing one can harvest and preserve food just a little at a time.  :)