Freezing Summer.

Few years ago I treat my self to standing freezer and since then every summer I freeze fruits, vegetables and herbs. It feels so good in winter to have fresh berries for smoothies, asparagus and broccoli for soups, beans for stews and herbs for garnish. Couple weeks ago I got some local asparagus and we enjoyed it almost every day but I also froze some for delicious soup.

 Here are few ways of freezing :

1.  Wash your veggies or fruits, some veggies need to be blanched like asparagus, beans and broccoli, they just taste better if you blanch them. Then I don't wait until they dry I just lay them in single layer on plastic foil on cookie sheet, you can do couple layers with plastic in between each layer, put them in a freezer for couple hours and then transfer the veggies or fruits into a freezer bags, this way they will not stick to each other as much. If you just wash it and put it in a bag you will end up with big blob of ice.  The plastic foil helps with separating your product, I tried wax paper, aluminum foil and just the cookie sheet and the plastic works the best.

2. After washing fruits or veggies I lay them again in single layer on cookie sheet but this time on clean tea towels and leave them to dry before I put it in freezer bags. I use this method on blueberries.

3. When it comes to freezing herbs, you just need to wash them, dry them and then I chop mine and put it in a freezer bags or jars. The only herbs that I freeze are parsley and dill because that's what I use but I'm sure you can freeze any herb. When I chop them I use only the leafs but I save the stems and freeze them separately and when I make soups I add few stems for flavour.