Friday, August 28, 2009

Food obsession

Two things I'm obsessed with right now, and they are both food related. The first is for Aaron and I - freezing seasonal fruit. I love blueberries and Aaron loves peaches. We happen to have a peach tree in our front yard that REALLY produces peaches (Aaron swears we picked 50 lbs of fruit this year). So a few weeks ago, we basically would sit in the kitchen and peel peaches for about an hour a night to try and get as many frozen as possible. They are for wonderful peach pies in the winter (which is an amazing treat). In blueberry news, a few weeks ago when I went up to the cabin for the day, I stopped at my favorite blueberry place, Sussman's - where I usually ask my mom to get me a 4 qt pail to last me through the winter. I usually eat about 1/2 right away, and then store the rest for blueberry muffins and pie. This was the first year I went myself- and they sell 20 lb boxes! Good GOD! I bought the 20 lbs, shared a bunch (like 2 quarts) with Suzanne, ate some, and today, separated the box into 38 CUPS of blueberries. Heaven.

So we have enough fruit for at least 4 peach pies and 5 blueberry pies plus like 18 more cups of blueberries for muffins and pancakes... Happy sigh.

I also made some more adventurous food for Hulk last night:
  • Blueberry applesauce (which I fed him right away - HUGE hit)
  • Banana/avocado (he had it this morning for breakfast.... LOVED)
  • Tofu/banana/strawberry
  • Tofu/banana/blueberry
  • Pumpkin with Cinnamon
  • pumpkin/peaches

Only thing that was 'fresh' were the bananas and avocado - the rest came from a can (the pumpkin - get the plain pumpkin NOT the pie filling) or frozen. I think I spent maybe 20 minutes each time as I only have 3 ice cube trays - so I can only make a little bit at a time.... but damn. Easy. And huge cost savings. I'm sad that I didn't start this sooner, but happy that I figured it out before the twins came. Oh - and I get all my recipes (such as they are - it's mostly pureeing stuff together with my immersion blender) from this website. It's actually run by a woman I used to work with! She quit working with us after the birth of her twins, and concentrated on this website - which is doing great. Her husband still works at my company, and he pointed me to this great resource.

5 comments:

HereWeGoAJen said...

How do you freeze your fruit? Does it thaw in the same good quality that it was when it went into the freezer? (I'd like to start freezing some stuff, can you tell?)

K @ ourboxofrain said...

I am also a wholesomebabyfood.com devotee. We made all of Harry's food until he began to shun the mush in favor of finger and table food. We still have quite a bit of frozen mush, which we sneak into other things, like yogurt, or occasionally pasta, just so it doesn't go to waste.

I'll second Jen's question: more info on freezing fruit. When I've frozen fruit, it turns to mush when it is thawed. Am I going wrong in the freezing or the thawing?

Becky said...

sounds awesome, i can't believe you get peaches in mass. We had tons of blueberry bushes when i was growing up in mass, i love, love blueberries!

Carrie27 said...

Lucky! Fresh fruit just few feet away. Heaven is right!

Drooling for some fresh blueberry muffins and pies now.

Tammy said...

Frozen blueberries in the bottom of a bowl, pour or spoon your hot oatmeal on top, let it sit for a few minutes before adding your milk or whatever you use for topping. It thaws the berries just enough so they aren't solid. Yummy in the winter! Peaches work about the same.