Hi UCGAL, I have wondered how much you all might be gardening now.
This pesto is complete, (some people just pulverize and freeze the leaves). It goes into regular zip lock baggies and I kind of roll those and squeeze that air out and then 4 or five of those go into a heavier duty quart freezer bag, so double wrapped. The food processor makes enough for one of these setups per batch. 5 cups leaves, 1 cup cheese , 1 cup nuts, about 1 cup olive oil, 9 teaspoons garlic and salt and pepper to taste. (watch out for salt in cheese from Wisconsin!).
Spaghetti sauce is complete too with meat or vegetarian but all you have to do is heat it up. Just food process tomatoes skin and all and cook the sauce for about an hour with added organic paste from Costco if needed. We put it in half full gallon freezer bags and use loaf pans to give it shape until it freezes solid.
We have a chest freezer and two combos, so canning is not urgent. We have even frozen beets and made borscht later on and shredded zukes and pureed pumpkin for bread in winter, It works great. Sun dried tomatoes freeze nicely too, for that pesto dinner in January or for soups. Ever check the price of sun dried tomatoes?
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Awesome. We don’t have a chest freezer, but we have a big enough freezer to stash some stuff anyway. We’ve already frozen some pesto in ziplocs – as an experiment, but since we’re still in basil season, we haven’t tried thawing any out. I’ll feel free to continue this. And we’ll definitely try the frozen red sauce. We’ve had some great sauces so far this summer… but have been (barely) able to keep up with what we’re producing… It will be a relief to be able freeze some before we’re sick of these sauces.
I’ve been shocked at how much pine nuts have gone up vs previous years. $23 for the 24oz bag at costco – but that’s still a lot cheaper than the cost at Sprouts or elsewhere. I definitely prefer pesto with pine nuts vs walnuts.
