Laying down stores for winter
Last week I got a bit of a nesting instinct come over me.
Pulled up two kilograms of carrots from the garden. Made a carrot soup, a carrot and lentil soup. Then with the rest of the lentils I made dal, half of which I stuffed with spinach also from the garden.
Each batch is two meals for two people. I then freeze each meal's worth in tupperware, pop it out the tupperware like an ice cube, and bag it.
Alongside this I cooked up some ugly tomatoes into pasta sauce that should be at least another four meals.
And hacked up, picked bugs out of, blanched, and froze, two cauliflowers. We ate one also. There's two more to pick this weekend. My cauliflowers never got bigger than a floret in previous years. Now they have and I realise I don't eat all that much cauliflower.
And peeled loads of garlic. I hate processing garlic and like to buy it chopped and pasted in jars. Which is why I don't grow it. My wife said she wanted to grow some and would deal with it. And yet, here I am. I freeze it because it's minimal processing at this point and I can chop it or blend it while frozen which is much tidier and less smelly.
What I've not got is pumpkins. They are still outside flowering and trying to grow little pumpkins, apparently havingnot realised it's the middle of October. I'll put them out of their misery soon. Usually this time of year I'm making loads of pumpkin soup. I'll prowl the supermarket post-Halloween looking for cheap ones.
I'm not actually crazy about soup but it's an easy wintery food, it's a good way of cooking large amounts of a thing, and I make it pretty spicy.
Next week I need to make another batch of our pizza sauce so I'll probably do at least another big cook while I'm at it.