I do not grow celery in my garden. Somehow, I think I'm "afraid" of it, thinking it must be difficult and exotic. Well, whether it is or not, I always buy it instead. The problem has been that I'll buy a perfectly good stalk of celery, use part of it, put it back in the refrigerator and forget about it. The next time I see it, well, um... it's a little "gone by" as they say.
Yesterday I saw beautiful stalks of celery for 76 cents each. I bought 6 of them. I cut off the root end, carefully washed all of the celery and sliced it up quickly in my food processor:
Then I put 3 cups batches into Food Saver bags and vacuum sealed them:
I ended up with 18 packages of celery and froze them:
Now, when I need celery for chowder, soup or stir-fry, I can pull a package from the freezer and use it. I realize that most instructions for freezing vegetables recommend blanching to stop the enzymes that will make the product deteriorate. I find, though, that frozen celery holds it's flavor well if I vacuum seal it. Even in regular freezer bags, I can keep it for quite a while. I have gone so far as to rinse the ice crystals off of some that I froze in regular freezer bags and it worked out just fine.
So, I have solved the trouble with celery. :)
Excellent idea. I am wondering how much food I will end up with going from two large upright freezers to a 7 cubic foot chest freezer. I have been dehydrating some things to save space. I may have to try dehydrating celery because I do the same as you as far as wasting it goes and no one likes to waste food. Might as well toss money in the trash.
ReplyDeletedebbieo, it will certainly be a challenge learning and wrapping your mind around a different streamlined way of managing your food. I am so glad you have the extra trailer at least!
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