Endless Summer

OK, before everyone starts thinking I'm crazy, I'll acknowledge we haven't had summer yet in 2010, at least in northern California. I hope I don't burst any bubbles out there, but it pretty much looks like we won't get one either. That being said, I still had a bunch of summer produce to make use of before it spoiled, so the decision was made to freeze it. The two things we had way more than we need for the next thousand or so meals was basil and tomatoes. Fortunately for us, both of these freeze very well with a small amount of prep work. I say small amount because once I describe the prep work, it doesn't sound like much, but in reality, it did take a fair amount of time to get all of this done. Luckily, the two main grunt workers in Farmville these days have a long history of knuckling down and getting this type of work done without complaining. It's actually pretty fun because once you establish a rhythm and pace, the discussion can range from favorite movies to anything else worthy of the attention of two people with a mountain of produce in front of them that needs something done to it.

First, we'll talk about the basil. The picture of the wicker basket full of basil stalks came from three of the eight to ten basil plants growing in Farmville. It's amazing how much basil can come from just a few plants. I encourage everyone to have at least one or two basil plants in their gardens. They are more than worth it. The basic process for freezing pesto is to cut a bunch of basil branches and strip the leaves from them. This part is time consuming but if you tackle it with at least one other team member, it's pretty easy. Once the leaves are stripped, they need to be washed several times in cold water and drained. A colander works well, but a salad spinner would probably be better. Our recipe used garlic, pine nuts, olive oil and the basil leaves. We used a food processor to puree everything to the consistency of a thick paste. Most pesto recipes also call for Parmesan cheese, but since this is going into the freezer, leave the cheese out for now. Once you thaw and use later, just add the grated cheese then. We spooned the finished pesto (the picture with the white bowl) into small Dixie cups to freeze. This makes it easier to use a vacuum sealer, but if you're using zip lock bags, it makes sense to portion into the bags and force the air out before zipping shut, and then throw into the freezer. Doesn't get much easier to have great tasting pesto to use during the winter months. Pesto truly is the "taste of Summer".

The tomatoes were not complicated to process, but like the basil, the amount of work was a bit more than what it sounds like when you write about. The basic process was to cut an "X" on the blossom end and drop in boiling water for thirty seconds to help remove the skin. Immediately upon removing from the boiling water, you cool them in ice water for a minute or so. After this, the skins are easy to peel off. We cut the tomatoes in half and squeezed the seeds out. Some might not want to go to this much effort and I'm not sure it makes a huge difference. The recipe I was following said to do this step and I'm not one to "swim against the current". The biggest hassle with the tomatoes was the amount of liquid pulled out when applying the vacuum to pack them in the bags. I saw a post on bulletin board later that said it's better to oven dry tomatoes and then vacuum pack to avoid this nuisance. The plan in a couple weeks is to oven dry some, so a later post will talk about that.

Regardless of how you preserve tomatoes, basil, or any other summer produce, you capture the true essence of a vine ripe product to use later in the year when a taste of summer is sorely needed. Even as the non-summer of 2010 is a distant memory, having a summertime dish on the dinner table in December, for example, is a nice experience. Let's all do what we can to preserve the bounty of Summer.

PS- I didn't feel like fighting with making the pictures correspond with the sequence of the text, so unitl I do that, please know the order of the pictures is out of whack.