08-03-2008--Preserving Vegetables from Garden

Hi, I thought that I would share with you today one of the things I'm doing to conserve on my food bill for this winter. We grew our first garden this year! It's pretty small because we didn't know if we had what it takes to maintain one. Next year it will be bigger! Anyway, we are up to our ears in cucumbers and I've been giving many of them away. My best crop is the green beans. Every Saturday for the past few weeks I go and harvest my little crop then I bring the beans in and process them for freezing. I was able to get one of those whatchacallit machines at Big Lots that vacuum packs food items. So, for the past several weekends I've been able to put 2-7 packs of beans in the freezer. It's just dh and me so that will go a long way. Anyway, I've been scouring the Internet looking for a basic tomato sauce recipe and I found on at a New Mexico State University web page http://cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_e/. I only have a few tomato plants because I don't care for tomatos but I do enjoy dishes that have tomato sauce in them. The recipe sounds like a lot of work but it's worth it when you look at how high food prices are now and financial experts predict even higher prices this winter. Here's a few more places to visit for tips on freezing and canning food

• http://cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_e/


• http://www.canning-food-recipes.com/canning.htm


• http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/TOPIC_Canning_Food


• http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/


• http://www.pickyourown.org/allaboutcanning.htm

I have some onions coming in and I want to chop them up and dehydrate them to use in cooking. I would like to buy a couple bushels of corn to process and freeze but the going price at farmers' markets is $40 a bushel! Between the summer storms, higher transportation costs and the increased use of corn to make ethanol corn prices have soared! Anyway, if anyone has some more hints, recipes or comments please write me.

For more information, go to your favorite search engine and type in "preserving foods," "canning foods" or "freezing foods." Good luck and have fun!

Take care...Sharon