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Originally Posted by gentlemango  School me about freezing fruit and veggies. You can't thaw and eat them raw, right? Do you use them for purees in recipes then? I have tried to freeze mushrooms and peppers and tomatoes before and they come out destroyed. We have tomatoes rotting on the vine outside but I can't use them up fast enough.
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I'm kind of making it up as I go along, LOL, but with peaches (and bananas, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries), I just wash them and cut them into chunks as needed, and then I lay them on a cookie sheet -- a single row works best, but it's not strictly necessary. Then when they're frozen, I pop them off the cookie sheet and into freezer bags. If I skip the cookie sheet step, I end up with a big chunk of frozen fruit, and generally I'd rather be able to use a portion of a bag of fruit, rather than the whole thing at once. So then when I want to make a smoothie or whatever, I just take out the amount I need.
I also did that with peppers, slicing them before putting them on the cookie sheet. I haven't frozen peppers before, so I don't know for sure how they'll turn out, but mostly we like them for using in stir-fries and other cooked dishes, so it won't matter if they're a little soft, rather than crisp. I've used bags of frozen veggies from the grocery store before, and the peppers in those are a little soft, but perfectly fine for cooked dishes. I'm thinking it'll work about the same with tomatoes; I'm freezing small whole tomatoes, mainly to toss into soups, where again, it won't matter if they're a little soft. (I may try canning larger tomatoes after cutting them up.) Barbara Kingsolver, in
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle said it works really well to freeze tomatoes whole, so I figured I'd try it and see. I planted a ton of cherry tomatoes, more than we care to eat fresh, but I don't think they're really worth the effort to can them, but if freezing works, great, and if not, no real harm done.
ETA: I did a bit of looking around, and it seems that some people do blanch peppers before freezing, but many do not. I still have peppers growing in the garden, so I may try blanching the next batch and seeing how they do in comparison to the not-blanches ones.
I try not to think about it. It must have stayed for a least a few days, all frozen and piled on top of each other.
