Asian Long Beans Thread 2014

[baymule]

If I can feel a seed lump, I just let them go to seed, especially if they have that hollow feeling. I like them small around. I sauté them with onion with a splash of soy sauce. Yummy!

@flowerweaver you have got to get an upright freezer! They don't take up much room and then you can let your garden madness really go wild. After all, you have to fill that freezer up, don't you?

 

[Smart Red]

Everyone knows freezers work best when kept filled. @baymule has you best interests at heart, @flowerweaver. Listen to her.

 

[flowerweaver]

@baymule LOL our old farmhouse kitchen is really small, as is our utility room. I don't know where I'd put an upright one. I'm going to have to take out cabinets just to get the new refrigerator to fit. We tend to eat everything fresh since we can grow almost year round (as I'm sure you probably can too) and anything extra we preserve or dehydrate as appropriate. For staples I grow mostly dry beans and corn. As a kid my mom would subject me to freezer-burned veggies so I think I have developed an irrational fear of them!

 

[Smart Red]

@flowerweaver, are you up early or up late? I'm going back to bed.

 

[baymule]

@flowerweaver southwest Texas? What county? I currently live in Polk county, 75 miles north of Houston, but moving 160 miles north to Smith county. The temps are pretty close to the same, just a few degrees colder. I grow cole crops in the winter here, but will have to get my "garden boots" on the ground in Smith county. And our soil up there is real sandy, have a lot of work to do on that!

I like cream corn, frozen. And peas, butterbeans and okra. I pick blueberries and blackberries every year and put in the freezer, cobbler in the winter is my go-to comfort food! Fresh is good, but can't get those in the winter. Also raised a bunch of Pekin ducks in the spring and packed the freezer. Buy meats on sale and put in the freezer. Having a freezer lets me take advantage of sales.

 

[flowerweaver]

@Smart Red neither--frequent mid-life insomnia from 3-4 am.
@baymule I'm up in the hills about an hour from Mexico near Garner State Park, so it gets pretty cold here, too, since we are in a frost pocket. You probably have better soil, though! We are a three hour round trip to a grocery store, 4 hours for organics, so it's easy to run out of space for food. The fridge we are replacing is 16+ years old and small. I've held off buying a new one but it finally has gone on the blink freezing our cold stuff and thawing our frozen. The new one which hasn't arrived has much more crisper space and a bigger frozen section, so I'm a happy camper. Been looking at an excuse to rip out these old cabinets, too!

 

[ninnymary]

baymule, I'm with you on buying meats on sale. I have an upright freezer in my garage that I don't know how I got along with out it for so many years. I almost feel like I need another one! I prefer to freeze than can. It just seems easier to me and even though we do get power outages they last only for a few minutes so no problem there. My freezer currently is almost full with flour (I make bread every week) brown rice, lots of heirloom tomatoes (for my tomatoe soup) and a couple of turkeys. I also have lots of raisons that I get from my sister that the kids just love. Oh and about 8 quarts of pasta sauce that I made.

Mary

 

[britesea]

Having lived through several (like 3 or 4) freezers dying, I no longer feel safe keeping lots of food in a freezer. The worst one was an enormous chest freezer the size of a sarcophagus-- We lost hundreds if not a thousand dollars worth of foods in that one. I also don't like freezer burned stuff, which happens all too often with a large freezer, and I am very bad about remembering to pull out protein icicles to thaw for dinner. With canned foods, I never have any of those problems. We do have a small chest freezer, but it's only about 5 cubic feet- I feel pretty confident that I could rescue most of the food in there and can or dry it in time, if we noticed that it was dying.

By the way, if you haven't heard about Strategic Shopping, here is an excellent website: http://www.thesurvivalistblog.net/strategic-shopping/ This gives you a list of what items go on sale at certain times of the year. Makes it a lot easier to plan for sales!

 

[baymule]

@flowerweaver we are moving to a doublewide on 8 acres, so will have a MUCH smaller utility room. We have bought a new washer/dryer front loader with a stacking kit so we will be able to squeeze the upright freezer in.

@britesea I goofed and bought a frost free freezer when my 40 year old upright freezer died. BIG boo-boo! I never got freezer burn on well wrapped meats in my old defrost-it-yourself freezer. Frost free definitely will freezer burn meats and even vegetables. By vacuum packing with my food saver, it helps a lot.

@ninnymary power outages are a problem on rural areas. Where we live now, in the middle of town, the worst is 3-4 weeks due to major hurricane damage, but usually no more than a day on any given power outage. Where we are moving to, I expect storms to knock out power and it will just be our tough luck for however long it takes.

 

[flowerweaver]

@baymule we have power outages, too, so that's another reason I don't want to freeze that much stuff. Do you have a vacuum pack food saver you'd recommend? I think I'll be investing in one soon.

 

[baymule]

@flowerweaver I bought a Food Saver at Walmart. I buy the bags on a roll and just cut and seal to make the size I want. With juicy items, like berries, I freeze them first, then pack and seal. With some foods, like squash, I put them in the bags, freeze overnight, then seal. I don't even blanch the squash and there is no freezer burn and no "off" taste. Frozen squash=mush, but I thaw the bag of thin sliced squash (use a mandolin) and cut a corner off the bag. Wring the bag, twist it like a washrag and squeeze the water out of the squash. Dredge in meal and fry. It is crispy, no more mush!