Freezing spinach

For spinach, you have the option of canning or freezing. You could probably dry it as well, but for us there was no question - freezing was likely to have the best texture and flavor. But you can't just rinse the leaves and shove them into the freezer - I'm not sure what would happen if you did that, but at the very least it would taste bad.

We rinsed the spinach leaves by dunking them in water, shaking them around, and then putting them in a colander. My spouse rinsed them before tearing off the parts he didn't want to preserve, while I removed the parts I didn't want before rinsing. I think either method is fine but my method meant having to change the water fewer times. Sometimes a clump of dirt or a little big would come off, which is a normal part of growing food. We just picked the parts we would want to eat if we were making a salad - we probably could've included more leaves, but I wanted this frozen spinach to be extra good! In the photo below you can see the bowl of spinach ready to be blanched.


Then, you blanch. This stops the growing process. We decided to use the steam blanching method rather than the immersion blanching method. For immersion blanching, you put the spinach in lightly boiling water for two minutes (precision is important when preserving food). For steam blanching, according to my resources, you just increase the time by 50% - so three minutes. We used a steamer pot and put a very thin layer of leaves in.


Then, you ice bath them. This stops the cooking process. This was kind of difficult - we didn't have enough ice on hand. But we did the best we could and I would just spoon the steamed spinach into the ice bath, swirl them around with my hand until they felt cooler than room temperature. Then we put them in a colander to drain.


Then, you remove the excess water. The more water you remove, the longer the spinach will keep in the freezer. My source recommended using a salad spinner, but we didn't have one so we did the best we could using a spoon to squeeze as much water out as possible. The following photo shows my spouse trying to squeeze as much excess water out as he could - even though we thought the spinach was well-drained, once it was in the bag we could see that there was a lot of water still hanging around.


Then, you put them in bags. We used quart-sized freezer bags and labelled the date, the vegetable, and any other information. For example, I wasn't sure if we were supposed to remove the stems or not so we did one with stems, one without. We're almost certain that you don't have to remove the stems, which is nice because doing so is time consuming. But, perhaps it will taste better.

We harvested enough for two quart-sized bags. In the future I will try to do more to get more water out, because I can tell there are a lot of ice crystals in the bags already. I don't think this will hurt the flavor as long as we use it relatively quickly - I'm guessing three months? I will say that we sampled some of the spinach and the quality - both taste and texture - was phenomenal when judged against the standard of supermarket frozen spinach. I'm excited to see how it holds up!

Sixth planting

Today I did the sixth and final planting - until I start working on fall crops. I was supposed to plant watermelons and asparagus, but the store-bought asparagus still hasn't poked through, and I've decided to wait and see if anything ever happens with it before planting the seeds. I will still be able to compare growth, and this is just easier.

The watermelon turned out to be difficult to plant, only because I have read wildly different recommendations on spacing - everything from 18 inches to 15 feet! I decided to go with the seed packet instructions in case it was specific to the variety, but even those were quite different and it didn't seem to be related to the size of the watermelon. I planted Crimson Sweet from seeds of change, Sugar Baby from territorial, and Petite Yellow from livingston.

Because the soil still hasn't quite warmed to where it should be, I'm using the cold frames to help the seeds along. I did the best with the space I had and planted them 3 feet apart - just one hill of each variety. I'll let you know how it goes!

last farmer's market tomorrow

I learned in the middle of this week that tomorrow is the last farmer's market of the season. They won't start up again until early June. I'm sort of feeling a sense of panic! We missed the market last week because when we got there about a half hour before close, everyone had left early. The weather was pretty bad and there weren't enough customers.

The only farmers who do a winter CSA do meat only - no veggies. But things like onions, carrots, and potatoes store well over the winter. They don't even have to be processed. I don't actually know how to store them though - that will be part of the learning next year. Anyway, I wonder why no farmers here offer this service? Maybe they think people only do CSA's for fresh produce and that people won't be willing to pay for local storage crops. A few farms in Eugene offered this, but only to CSA customers - so you wouldn't even hear about it if you didn't know the right people.

I guess this is when I should say to myself that the costs of going through winter without veggies outweigh the good. When the only option is not good for my health, maybe it's time to just buy produce flown in from South America. Or at least buy more frozen vegetables this year. But studies show that the longer you wait to eat vegetables after they're picked, the more nutrients they lose. And they really don't taste as good. So maybe I'm not missing that much. I will miss the farmer's market potatoes. They are truly in another world from conventional potatoes!