You'll wish that summer could always be here

Well, things haven't exactly been lazy around here (if you know the song referenced in the title), but we have been managing to enjoy some of the spoils of summer in the midst of moving in. Last Saturday, Tres and I took a trip out to a (fairly) nearby  farm and picked 20 pounds of blueberries. It was a really neat place - they also have u-pick organic cherries, apples, pumpkins, and squash, their prices are reasonable, and the people are super nice - I'm excited to go back for apples and to squeeze our own cider in the fall.

blueberries, with some ready for the freezer

After entertaining various ideas for preserving them, I decided we'd just eat as many as we wanted fresh and I would freeze the rest. I froze them in a single layer on cookie sheets (I followed a suggestion I read in a number of sources, that you don't wash them prior to freezing, in order to keep the skin from wrinkling. . . we'll see if this pans out), then transferred them to containers for the freezer. I wanted to try something other than ziploc bags this year, as in order to properly keep out air and moisture, they can really only be used once for this purpose, so I bought freezer-safe pint jars (the largest size they had - I would like to do more research and see if I can find straight-sided quart jars, if I decide I like this method) and filled those. It took a couple of days to process them all and we ended up with 24 pints of berries, in addition to plenty of leftovers for eating over the course of the week.

half of the berries, in the freezer

I've also been trying to do some preparing for this fall, when we will have a new little person around and might not be up to our usual cooking pace. Luckily, the garden is producing more than we can eat these days, so it's been easy to gather enough for some extra meals. My first attempt was a cucuzzi (squash) ragu, which I made in smaller quantities earlier last week and is nice as a stew with bread or on top of pasta, polenta, or your choice of grain. It's quite simple and easily adaptable to whatever you happen to have around.

Ingredients assembled (I ended up adding some carrots too)

ragu

I sauteed the onions and garlic until soft, then added the sliced cucuzzi (when it's small like this, you can leave the skin on and seeds in, if more mature, it's advisable to remove both - this holds true for any summer squash . . . if you're unsure, try a bit raw and see how you like the texture and taste) and carrots. Once they were softened, I added the coarsely chopped tomatoes and a pound of cooked, ground pork. I added salt and pepper, simmered it all together for about half an hour, and then put it into the fridge to cool, before putting it into containers for the freezer. I have, of course, no guarantees about how it will turn out (it's my experience that squash and tomatoes tend to get a bit watery in the freezer, so adding some tomato sauce when reheating might be a good idea . . . I'll try to revisit this after we eat it and talk about how it turned out), but it feels good to have a few meals prepared for the fall.


In other exciting garden-related news (and as you likely saw in Tres' earlier garden post), my dahlias are in full bloom. I've really been enjoying going down to the garden every couple of days and picking a new bouquet. Having a little something pretty in here during the chaos and general filthiness of moving has been a nice little touch of civility.