I have successfully filled my chest freezer!
I was worried it would be too big, but then, nothing like a food challenge to get the old juices flowing. Yesterday while I sat outside swatting wasps away from the bushel of grapes I was stemming, I got to thinking how last year I had bought only 1/2 bushel. Oops.
But a deal is a deal. Last year I was able to get away with separating the grapes and freezing them, but this year I was so late, I had to take a bushel of small grapes (not enough rain I was told) that were very ripe..in fact, many had split already. That meant no waiting. I made about 22 litres of juice, which will still be diluted a bit for drinking. That's a lot of grape jam/juice/stained fingers. Hooray! Next year, they'll be organic.
Also, on Saturday a few of us went out to Guelph to pick up 4 bushels of apples to share and 50 bags of organic cider. I got about 17 of those bags (each bag 1.3 litres). We paid $1.80/bag and it's glorious stuff. I'm definitely refining what I like to keep. As for the apples, I think I'll steer clear of sauce mostly and can some apple butter and maybe try some apple jelly. Once I'm though that bushel, I'm through with the harvest season. I've had my last day at the market, I've had my last day at the farm. It's been a good season.
Now, bring on the cold.
3 comments:
I'm jealous of your dedication to filling your freezer. I think to myself "hmm... I need to fill the freezer" and then I buy a bag of french fries to put in there.
And then we eat them the next day.
Thanks Alan, I'm really pleased with the whole thing though there is absolutely nothin wrng with french fries ;-) If you find your freezer is more empty than full most of the time, I can recommend putting in a container or two of water to keep frozen, it'll reduce the energy used to keep the space cold (less space to chill after everytime the door is opened).
I wish I was this dedicatd to my thesis!
I've considered the frozen water approach but haven't done it yet. We have about 500 cans of orange juice concentrate in there though, so that helps, right? I baselined the household appliances with a kill-a-watt meter I borrowed from the library to see where we were at (holy de-humidifier! that thing costs an arm and a leg to run) but I haven't tried much to reduce consumption, except to unplug a few phantom loads. Unfortunately the de-humidifier was an essential thing for a while - we were running at 93% humidity in the basement and taking out ~6L of water a day. Very bad. Now that fall has set in we're a lot better and consequently not spending an extra $40/month to take water out of the air. I'd rather spend the bills and avoid having moldy walls though....
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