Frozen Vegetables Archives

This past week Ree Drummand, The Pioneer Women, posted this photo of her Mason jar collection.

It made me laugh. Here is mine…

I see you, Ree.

PS- Who wants pickles?!

Digging through my glass jar collection inspired me to do some major spring cleaning and the timing also coincided very well with Lent. A great time for making changes, simplifying and setting goals… among other things. So I decided that, from now until Easter, Adam and I will deep clean and/or declutter a different area of the house each day.

It’s surprisingly going really well! Today we even took on our closet and were able to take three department store bags of old clothes to Goodwill.

One area of the house that isn’t assigned a specific day but we are focusing on this Lenten season is the freezer.

Now, I understand the typical thing to do during Lent is to fast, eat less of something or totally give up some kind of food, like dessert or carbs or whatever. But, we still have quite a bit of frozen garden vegetables that we need to go through.

We have some sweet corn, a little bit of sliced poblano peppers, cherry tomatoes, sliced zucchini and grated zucchini in the freezer and it’s only a matter of time before there is more. So, opposed to basically everyone else during Lent, we are going to make an effort to eat.

And in the spirit of continuing to be totally weird and different, I figured why not kick off this abnormal Lenten goal with a dessert.

It’s rare for me to bake. And, if I do bake, it’s even more rarely a sweet treat.

But, grated zucchini is great for baked desserts. One of Adam’s favorite desserts is Chocolate Zucchini Cake and I made it for his birthday in December. It also works really well in chocolate chip cookies.

In July I froze a bunch of zucchini’s in 1/2 cup portions to make for easy baking.

This cookie was kind of inspired by the chocolate chip cookie recipe and also by a Martha Stewart recipe where she makes it super decadent and turns it into a sandwich cookie.

What is nice about baking cookies is that I typically have all the ingredients in the pantry so I can bake them on a whim. Although, yesterday I was missing chocolate chips. But, with the cream cheese icing filling they didn’t need them… unless you really want them.

They were sweet and had a great balance of spice with the cinnamon, which compliments zucchini really well.

Couple good baking tips for the newbie’s and/or novice:

– It takes a little planning, but makes sure ingredients like eggs, butter, and cream cheese are room temperature. It’s easier to incorporate into the dough, makes more even cooking and a lighter texture.
– More planning. Make sure your oven is completely preheated before putting in baked goods. This also helps ensure more even and thorough cooking.
– The icing recipe below is also great for red velvet cakes!

Zucchini Sandwich Cookies

Cookies:
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon Baking Powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 ½ sticks of butter, divided and room temperature
½ cup sugar
½ cup light brown sugar, packed
1 large egg
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup grated zucchini
1 cup rolled oats
½ cup walnuts or chocolate chips (if desired)

Sandwich Filling:
8 ounces of cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350.
Mix together flour, cinnamon, baking soda and powder, and salt in bowl.
Beat one stick of butter and sugars until combined and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla.
Beat in dry mixture into the sugars. Mix in the grated zucchini, oats and nuts and/or chocolate chips.
Refrigerate for one hour.
If making sandwiches you want the cookies to be similar in size, so use an ice cream scoop to place on a greased or parchment paper lined cookie sheet at least one inch apart.
Bake twenty minutes, until edges are golden brown.
Cool completely on a wire rack.
To make sandwich filling, mix cream cheese and powdered sugar together. Spread on cool cookies to create sandwiches.

Check back often the next few weeks for many more recipes as we make our way through the freezer!

Last week, Adam looked out at the very snowy backyard and said, “I wish it was summer. I miss the garden. I wish we could go out there and work in it.”

He has been saying things like this for the last two months just about every other day. He has mentioned that he misses having variety fresh vegetables to eat. He even has been looking into green houses so we could have produce growing throughout the year.

… I think the root of this particular instance was that he didn’t want to go to spinning.

But, we did.

And, thank goodness we did because we had a feast waiting for us.

It was Adam’s Birthday!

Inspired by his desire for summer and fresh garden produce, I dug deep into our freezer and prepared a meal entirely using produce that came from our garden.

… With the exception of steaks. It was his birthday after all.

Our freezer is still pretty well stocked thanks to the time and effort we made to preserve vegetables from this summer’s garden. For Adam’s birthday meal I was able to use snap beans, cherry tomatoes, grated zucchini, sweet corn and poblano peppers. And a couple of the backyard eggs!

Here is what I made:

Balsamic Peas and Tomatoes with Feta

In the summer, I do this as a raw salad. It’s light and has great crunch with the vibrant flavors. But, because the vegetables were frozen, I sautéed them. Warm, this combination of flavors is excellent because the feta melts just a little for a touch of creaminess.

1 Tablespoon of olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup snap peas
1 cup cherry tomato
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
Salt and Pepper
Feta Cheese crumbles

Heat olive oil over medium high heat. Add garlic and cook until fragrant and begins to golden.

Add frozen peas and tomatoes, stir to coat with garlic and oil. Lower heat to medium and cook for three minutes. Add balsamic, salt and pepper, and cook for three more minutes, stirring occasionally.

Plate and top with crumbled feta cheese.

Spicy Skillet Corn

In case you are new here… Adam likes spicy food. And, this corn dish packs some heat!

1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
½ red onions
1 ½ cup frozen corn
½ cup frozen poblano pepper, diced
½ tablespoon cayenne pepper
Salt and Pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Add red onion and stir to coat with oil. Add corn, peppers and cayenne pepper, stir to combine with oil and onions. Cook until vegetables are tender.

Serve immediately.

Zucchini Cake

Zucchini Cake is essentially just chocolate cake, but the grated zucchini makes the cake super moist. Plus, you are getting some veggies while eating cake… life doesn’t get much better than that!

I have seen recipes for Zucchini Cake with lots of different seasonings added to the cake batter, such as cinnamon or ground cloves. It gives the cake good flavor, but for this occasion I kept it simple because I made Bourbon Butter cream Frosting. I did this wanting to give it a little “manly” touch (Adam’s a big fan of bourbon, if he is drinking a cocktail) and thought plain old chocolate cake would be best with the flavors of the spririt.

This recipe is based on the recipe Adam grew up with thanks to his mom. (… And, it probably was made for her by her mom!) Her recipe also calls for cinnamon, nuts and chocolate frosting and is fantastic.

Love/Romance Tip: Find out favorites from your man’s childhood and cook them. Often.

3/4 cups oil
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup milk
2 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 T baking cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups grated zucchini (I froze grated garden zucchini’s in ½ cup portions. Made this SUPER easy.)

Combine oil and sugar. Add eggs, vanilla, and milk. Mix well. Mix in dry ingredients. Stir in zucchini.

Bake in a greased pan (I used two cake pans) at 350 for 1 hour.

Once cool top with this:

Bourbon Butter Cream Icing

3 egg whites
2/3 cups sugar
Two sticks of butter, room temperature
1 (… or two) tablespoon bourbon, room temperature

Mix egg whites and sugar in a mixing bowl. Heat mixture to combine, stirring occassionally. (I placed my Kitchenaid bowl over a simmering pot of water. The steam heated the sugary mixture.)

Once combined, remove from heat and hook up to mixer. Mix on medium speed, add butter, one tablespoon at a time until combined and fluffy. Add bourbon, mix throughout.

We also had some champagne from our August trip to Oliver Winery to complete our “Summer” Celebration!

Cleaning Out The Freezer: Zucchini Sandwich Cookies

Taste of Summer in December