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Garden to table cooking doesn’t mean you have to cook everything from scratch for every meal. Sometimes the garden element could be just some dried or fresh herbs that you add in or sprinkle on top of a dish.
During the summer, I blanch, vacuum seal, and freeze most of the harvest of my garden’s broccoli, wax beans, and green beans. It’s summer in a bag! Then I just microwave some whenever I need a veggie side dish. Sometimes I’ll dress them up with a coat of garlic scape pesto (also frozen from my garden), a drizzle of butter or flavored olive oil, or a sprinkle of Everything Bagel seasoning. But most of the time, I just nuke and serve.
Here you can see how I combined those easy garden vegetable side dishes earlier this month with turkey leftovers (frozen from Thanksgiving) and store bought items like pierogi from a deli and a whole wheat stuffing mix that I jazzed up with dehydrated onions and celery from my garden and raisins.
The turkey leftovers, like my garden veggies, are as good as they were when I froze them several months ago because I used my FoodSaver vacuum sealer to remove all the air from their storage bags. Because it prevents freezer burn, the vacuum sealer is an excellent tool for storing leftovers as well as for preserving my precious garden harvests. I grew and preserved vegetables for many years without learning how to can. Freezing is easy, and the results are great. I can microwave them for quick and delicious meals anytime I want.
Because my freezer is stocked with organic vegetables from my garden, I don’t have to buy vegetables from the store unless I need something fresh that’s not currently growing in the garden, such as lettuce or crunchy celery. (Although I have still have dehydrated celery—which is fine for making stuffing or soups—in my pantry, it’s not crunchy and won’t work, for example, for a potato salad.) My garden usually produces enough beans to last until the next year’s harvest starts, and I’m working on getting broccoli to that point as well. The longer I can go without buying frozen vegetables, the better!
The Gardener Wife 