Preserving the Cauliflower Harvest

Gardening can be a funny thing.  Some years, even though you do everything you've always done, the yield is less than desirable.  This year the sweet potato harvest was lackluster, at best.  Some years, though, everything clicks on certain crops.  This year the cauliflower harvest can best be described as a bumper crop.  That term originates from the 19th century when things exceptionally large were termed as "bumper."

Before the big freeze we harvested all the cauliflower as exposing the heads to a deep freeze causes the cauliflower to become mushy and damaged.  We ate all we could, but decided we would need to blanch and freeze the excess so that we could preserve the harvest and eat it throughout the upcoming weeks and months.

Cauliflower grows with large leaves that curl around the head, leaving the head mostly protected.  As a result, the heads are snowball white, clean, with no blemishes or damage.  Tricia and I formed a quick assembly line, cutting off any remaining leaves and stem bottoms.  The upper portions of the stem are tasty and edible. 

We disassemble the heads, cutting them into florets a little larger than a golf ball.  While we are working on this, we get a pot of water boiling.  We also clean the sink and fill with cold water and ice.  We're about ready to get things going.

With the water at a full boil, we drop a batch of cauliflower into the water.  Once the water is boiling, we start the timer for three minutes.  It takes 3 minutes to blanch cauliflower.  Blanching the cauliflower (or any vegetable) does a couple of things: it preserves the color and it preserves the texture prior to freezing.

The beeper goes off, alerting Tricia that it's time to take it out.  I say "alerts Tricia" because I can't hear the beeper.  The timer sounds at a frequency that I cannot hear.  Years of running a crawfish boat with no hearing protection (my fault entirely) have resulted in hearing loss of certain frequencies.  There are worse afflictions, I suppose.  

Once the beeper sounds, we quickly remove the blanched cauliflower into a colander, allowing the hot water to drain out, and then we put the cauliflower into the cold water bath.  We want to immediately stop the cooking process.  To do so, we add more ice to the sink as needed.  Simultaneously, we put another batch of cauliflower florets into the water and start the whole process over again.  Rinse, wash, repeat... Literally.

Once the cauliflower has cooled, we bag it up into quart-sized Ziploc bags and put them into the deep freeze.  We yielded nine bags.

Of course, we did hold back 3 or 4 cauliflower heads to put in the crisper in the fridge and we'll eat that over the next week or so.  We always like to eat as much as we can fresh from the garden, but it's always important to be able to preserve the harvest.

Putting Vegetables Up

Ah!  Gardening is so relaxing.  Why, look at this pastoral scene.  I'm sitting on a concrete bench in the shade in an area we call the grove, and I'm looking at the garden growing.  The sweet potatoes are vining, the cucumbers are blooming and producing.  The yellow squash and zucchini are yielding such that we can barely keep up.  Same with the snap beans.  The corn is tasseling in the background.

There are times that gardening is relaxing.  It is rewarding, to be sure.  But once you plant it and harvest it, the work is not done.  In fact, you've got to eat it, give it away, or preserve it, because you'll flat run out of room.  You can't sit around once it's harvested.  There's work to be done.

We're on the third picking of the snap beans, and I picked a fourth time today.  We plant Contender green beans and Purple TeePee beans (just to keep things interesting).  We washed them up and chilled them and while they were still fresh, snapped off the ends.

Green beans are one of those things that are just favorites of everyone.  Even if you aren't a vegetable person (we all are), if you have someone a little finicky, well, they'll eat green beans, especially if you cook them with some tasso or bacon or sausage to amp up the flavor.  We did cook some for the Mother's Day meal, but the rest of this portion of the harvest, we'll freeze.

To freeze them, you'll want to blanch them.  This stops the enzyme action from breaking them down.  It also keeps a great texture and vibrant color.  Except for the purple beans.  they turn dark green upon blanching.  We blanch for 3 minutes.

We immediately ladle the blanched beans into the kitchen sink, which is full of ice water & ice.  This stops the cooking process.

Once completely cool, we drain through a colander.

And then we bag them all up in quart-sized zip loc freezer bags.  This is the perfect size to pull out of the freezer and voila, you have a side dish that only needs to be warmed up.  Best part of it is, it is healthy, fresh, and delicious.

The second picking yielded ten quarts of beans.  

Carrots For Days

Normally, we're harvesting the fall crop of carrots in February.  Our very cold weather delayed everything.  In fact, I thought it had killed our carrots.  I even planted two rows of spring carrots, which I never do, as I thought all hope was lost.  But alas!  The fall carrots rebounded and we had a reduced, but still sufficient harvest.

On a recent trip to where she grew up in Corpus Christi, my wife returned with a big basket that my mother-in-law had given her.  It works out nicely for harvesting.  We have a nice haul of Danvers carrots.  They're our 'normal' orange variety.

Then I picked the other two rows of the other varieties of carrots we have planted.  We fed the carrot tops to the animals by the fence watching our every move.

Here is a better look at the varieties after they're all washed up.  On the left, we have the Cosmic Purple Carrot.  It is purple on the outside with an orange flesh.  The one in the middle is your regular run of the mill Danvers carrot.  The one on the right is my favorite.  It is the Atomic Red Carrot.  It has a beautiful red color all the way through.

We eat a bunch of them, mainly oven roasted with olive oil and salt and pepper topped with some fresh parsley.  But we preserve a bunch, too.  We will can some of them.  We dice them up with a food chopper and then blanch them and bring them to a cool temperature in ice water.

We bag up a lot of quart bags of carrots.  These work perfectly for a quick meal as a side dish or, our new favorite, Cream of Carrot soup.  Into the freezer they go until we're ready.

We are trying a new experiment this year in dehydrating some carrots.  We'll do a couple of trays to see how they come out.

This is the same tray as above after drying.  Wow, they kind of went away, didn't they?

We'll put them in a jar like this.  When we were finished, we had a pint full of dehydrated carrots.

Tricia is thinking that when we don't have fresh carrots, she can throw a couple of tablespoons into stews where they'll rehydrate.  We'll know how this experiment turns out and whether or not this is something we will continue to do as another option to preserve the harvest.

How Sweet It Is!

We just have two rows of sweet corn in the garden.  I didn't want to plant a whole lot as we still have a number of bags of frozen sweet corn from last year - both on the cob and cut off the cob.  The corn grew very tall this year, some of it reaching heights of 10 feet tall.  The tall stature of the corn was call for concern when, after a thunderstorm, most of it laid down on top of the okra growing to the south of it.  Fortunately, the sun came out one day later and most of the stalks stood right back up.

Sweet corn is ready for picking when the silk turns from a pink or red color to a dull brown.  This one here?  She's ready for pickin'.

I have a little goofy ceremony I do every year.  The first ear of corn I harvest, I stand right there in the garden row and eat it raw right off the cob.  So sweet!  So good!  I want you to notice something about this variety I'm harvesting today.  It is called, "Country Gentleman" sweet corn.  How 'bout that name?  Even if it wasn't good, I think I'd buy it just for the name.  I think the world needs more Country Gentlemen.

Country Gentleman is a white shoepeg sweet corn.  Let's talk about that for a minute.  Shoepeg corn?  What is that?  Well, it is named that for a 19th century shoe-making term for its kernels resemble the wooden pegs that were used to assemble the soles to the upper part of the shoes.  Another fun fact is that shoepeg corn is a favorite bait for catching Sockeye Salmon.  We're not fishing with it, though.  We'll eat it all!

Notice the disorderly, mob rule-type organization of the kernels on the cob.  Have you ever seen such a thing?  It's nuts.  Other corn is arranged uniformly, in straight rows.  It's as if Country Gentleman corn said, "Ain't nobody got time for that."  

But out here on our little homestead farm, we share the bounty with the other inhabitants.  I tossed the shucks, silk, and stalk over the garden fence and the cows, goats, and chickens had a field day (pun intended) eating it.

Some of the corn is real nice and pretty, with the whole cob full.

Other ears have kernels missing, both by lack of pollination and by damage from worms.  We put the ears in a pot and blanched the corn, allowing it to boil for 9 minutes before removing it and putting into a ice water bathe to stop the cooking process.

I used a sharp knife to cut the small kernels from the cob, making sure to scrape the cob to get every single last bit of 'milk' out of the cob.

Just for grins, I put it into a big measuring cup as I went...  The first one was soon full.

It was mighty tempting to not eat a bunch more right off the cutting board.  But, not being a sockeye salmon, I was able to resist the temptation.

We packed up the corn in quart-sized freezer bags to put in the freezer.

My favorite dish to make with this is Corn Maque Choux.  So doggone good!!  I'll show you something else we did with it in a couple days.  Sweet corn is fun to harvest, but the next best thing is eating it.

Preserving the Harvest

Our carrot harvest for 2021 was a bumper crop.  Unbelievable!  We planted three rows of carrots this year.  Carrots will fool you.  The seeds are so tiny.  They are a little hard to plant.  In the fall when we sow the crop, I pinch some seeds between my thumb and forefinger and sprinkle them down the prepared seed bed.  They are hard to see, and I often overplant.  Once they are established, I struggle with the act of thinning them out for some reason.  This results in large carrots nestled by smaller carrots on the same row that were crowded out.

We posted earlier about how we harvested a lot of the big carrots and ate a bunch, blanched some, and gave a bunch away.  Carrots, with their vibrant green shoots are a gorgeous crop.  This weekend, I decided to go ahead and harvest a bunch more.  On two of the rows, some had grown too big and started to soften on the ends - some were not fit for eating (by us).  The cows, however, loved them!  Here are some of the crop all washed up and ready for processing.

Some of the shapes of the carrots are interesting.  We pulled some that had two "legs" that looked like someone running.  This carrot looks similar to a woman with an hourglass figure.  One of her legs is quite swollen, though.

We take them inside and cut off the tops and the bottom.

We save the tops and bottoms for the goats.  They are like candy to those goats.  They'll quickly eat them all and beg for more.  Nothing, and I mean nothing goes to waste.

Using my knife, I cut the carrots into chunks - not too big and not too small.  These are all placed in a tub for further processing.

Tricia bought this contraption years ago that speeds up the cubing process.  It has a sharp blade, so you must be very careful.  You lay the carrot cubes on the blade and pull a handle down with force.  This pushes the carrot through the blade and into the container below.

Quicker that you can say, "Peter Rabbit," the container is filled.  Then you repeat the process again and again.

These cubed carrots are poured into a pot of boiling water.  The timer is set for two minutes.  Once the timer goes off, the blanched carrots are poured into a colander and drained.  The water is returned to the pot and the process is started again for the next batch.

The blanched carrots are thrust into chilled water to stop the cooking process.  When they are cool, we pack them in quart-sized freezer bags for storage in the deep freeze.

When all was said and done, we had 29 quart bags of carrots to put into the freezer!  That's a big supply of carrots.  We'll be eating on carrots for quite some time.  And we still have half a row to harvest.  Note to self:  Next year only plant 1 row!!  

A Final Word on Broccoli and Cauliflower

While blogging about roasting cauliflower last night, I realized that there were a few more things to be said about this delicious vegetable. It would have made the post too long, so I mentioned that I would talk about it later.  So here goes:  First is the fact that cauliflower makes one head and then it is done.  Once we pick the head of cauliflower, I trim off the leaves and feed them to the cows. 

Broccoli is a different story.  Once we pick the main head, I leave the leaves and the plant will send out shoots of new growth, producing florets that we are able to go out and pick for weeks after the initial harvest.  It is the gift that keeps on giving.  As the weather warms, you have to pick it daily or the florets will quickly turn into yellow flowers.

Yesterday I mentioned that, especially if there is a warm snap, you must be diligent about checking on your cauliflower.  I harvested the six cauliflower heads that I had allowed to grow for just ONE DAY too long.  Whereas the cauliflower yesterday was at the peak of ripeness, the ones below are a bit over-ripe and have begun to separate instead of resembling a big white snowball.  There's nothing wrong with them and they'll all be eaten and enjoyed.  They just aren't as pretty and perfect as the others.

Since we've got more than we can eat at one time, we'll blanch three of the heads.  We wash the cauliflower as sometimes stink bugs, snails, slugs and other critters will hitch hike on the plants inside.  Then we break off the florets.

We bring a pot of water to boil and drop the florets into the water, allowing it to boil for exactly 3 minutes.

Then we remove the cauliflower from the boiling water and submerge in ice water.  It is important to quickly stop the cooking process.  We leave the cauliflower in the ice water until it is ice cold.  That takes about 5 or 6 minutes.

The result is firm, blanched beautiful cauliflower.  Blanching preserves the cauliflowers color and 'crunch' and stops the enzyme action that deteriorates the texture, flavor and longevity.

Finally, we get some cleaned zip loc bags.  (No sense throwing out perfectly good zip locs if they are clean and free of holes.)  We re-label and re-use them.

These will go into our freezer and we'll enjoy cauliflower long after the season has ended.  We use the exact same procedure with broccoli.  We like to extend the harvest by putting some away in the deep freeze to enjoy later.

A Gallon of Carrots for the Freezer

First an update on the rogue chicken that was in the garden and we posted about. Yesterday afternoon Benjamin and I drove to the local hardware store and purchased a 50 foot roll of welded wire that is 36 inches high and has 2"x4" holes in it.  There are places in the hog wire fence in the back yard where the goats have stood on the fencing to help them reach the leaves of a willow tree.  The goats like to eat the leaves, but in so doing, they've stretched out the fence and that allows the trespassing chicken to squeeze through the enlarged holes in the fence and then quickly make her way to the garden.

We fastened the fencing over the stretched-out fence and called it a day, stepping back and nodding approval at out job.  Knowing that the holes in the picket fence had been (temporarily) patched and adding an additional 50 feet of fencing, I asked Tricia, "So do you think the hen will find her way out again?"  We both optimistically remarked that our efforts did the trick.

This evening I asked if the chicken had visited the garden.  Tricia answered in the affirmative and said she had to toss the hen out of the garden again and that she had eaten a little more of the remaining cabbages.  Arrgghh!  That fat hen is asking to be a contributor to our next chicken and sausage gumbo.

So on to the topic of the day.  Last week we harvested a nice bucket of carrots and that represented about 33% of our carrot production for the year.  We still have two more rows to harvest.

We've eaten some of them raw and cooked some with butter, but we need to blanch some so that we can freeze some to extend the harvest and we can enjoy carrots all year long.  Benjamin and I peeled all the carrots and cut the tops off, feeding the tops and peelings to the chickens.  We used a "As seen on TV" product that Tricia bought to chop all the carrots up uniformly.  It works pretty good.

I started a pot of water boiling and once it boiled, I put all the chopped up carrots in the water.  When it began to boil again, I set the timer for 5 minutes.

When they had boiled for five minutes, I spooned them out of the boiling water and immediately put them in iced water to immediately stop the cooking.  I let them continue to cool for ten minutes and took them out of the water and filled quart-sized freezer bags with the fresh blanched carrots.

In a very short time, we had 4 quarts of carrots ready to put into the deep freeze for us to enjoy later.

For now, we'll continue to eat them freshly pulled out of the ground, fresher than you can get anywhere and speaking of pulling things from the ground, I think I'll pull the remaining cabbages from the garden tomorrow so that miserable hen doesn't eat them.  That's another good thing about carrots - they are a root crop and the hen can't get to those!