How To Freeze Cantaloupe

August 12, 2011 By Budget Saving Mom 8 Comments

We love fresh cantaloupe! However, sometimes there is too much cantaloupe coming in at the same time to eat all of it fresh. So, what can you do with the extra? We freeze it for smoothies. Yummy! Freezing cantaloupe is very simple, and quick.

How To Freeze Cantaloupe:

1. Slice your cantaloupe in half.

2. Scoop out and discard the seeds (or feed them to your chickens, ducks or guineas).

3. Scoop out the orange flesh. We just use a ice cream scoop or a melon baller. All the pieces do not have to be the same. I just do it as quickly as possible.

4. Place the cantaloupe pieces in a single layer on a cookie sheet.

5. Freeze the cantaloupe on the cookie sheets for about 24 hours.

6. Take the frozen cantaloupe off of the cookie sheets.

7. Place the frozen cantaloupe into labeled freezer bags and freeze to use later in smoothies.

Want to learn how to grow cantaloupe? Check out my post here.

More budget saving gardening tips

may contain affiliate links

Filed Under: Gardening, Organic Tagged With: how to freeze melon

How To Quickly Peel Tomatoes

August 9, 2011 By Budget Saving Mom 8 Comments

Check out all the tomatoes that we picked yesterday morning! I am so excited to have to many tomatoes to can!! We will be making pizza sauce, homemade Rotel, salsa, tomato paste, tomato sauce, V8 juice, whole tomatoes, tomato soup & more with our tomatoes. I spent the entire morning picking and processing. I have taken quite a few pictures & any recipes that I don’t have up yet, I will put up sometime over the next couple of weeks.

I love growing my own tomatoes. We grow bushels of them each year, and it is so much fun cooking with them!! However, since we have to peel thousands of tomatoes, we have eventually found a way to make peeling them incredibly fast & easy!

How To Quickly Peel Tomatoes:

First, we place the tomatoes into the freezer overnight. Since we are cooking with the tomatoes, we don’t worry about how freezing can change the texture of the tomato since it will soften when cooking regardless. Some people are concerned about lack of flavor after freezing tomatoes. However, we only freeze our tomatoes for 24 hours, they are freshly picked which makes them more flavorful than anything that you can buy in the store, and I have never noticed a decrease in flavor. Regardless, when you process as many tomatoes as we do, there is no time to peel each tomato with a knife. This method is super fast, and I LOVE IT!

Next, place the tomatoes into hot water. When you do this, it causes the skin to fall off or come off VERY easily. You can literally peel an entire tomato in two seconds.

Pick up the tomato and run your fingers along the side of the tomato applying a little bit of pressure. This will cause the skin to separate from the tomato if it has not already. This is VERY simple. Many times the skin will just fall off in the water.

Just pull the skin off of the tomato. It will literally slide right off. Also, any imperfections will slide off as well. This means that if you have a spot of blight, you won’t have to cut it off, it should come right off with the skin.

Pull the skin all the way off the tomato.

Place the skinned tomatoes into a bowl to process. The skins can be used for compost or as chicken food if you have any chickens.

This really is a VERY QUICK method! I was able to peel a little over 20 gallons of tomatoes in about an hour today. Plus, only the skin comes off of the tomatoes, meaning that you get to eat the rest of the tomato. If you use a knife to peel the tomatoes, you will always take off some of the flesh of the tomato as well.

More organic gardening tips

may contain affiliate links

Filed Under: Gardening, Organic Tagged With: How To Quickly Peel Tomatoes

Garden Pictures

August 8, 2011 By Budget Saving Mom 4 Comments

canned peas

Limas we are saving for seed

tomatoes

Our garden is really coming in. Yay!! I thought I would share a few pictures of the produce that we are getting. I worked all day today in the garden picking & processing. It was great!

More organic gardening tips

may contain affiliate links

Filed Under: Gardening, Organic

Wear Gloves In The Garden

July 25, 2011 By Budget Saving Mom 4 Comments

Here is my organic gardening tip for the day! Wear gloves when you are gardening. I almost always wear gloves when I am weeding, but I never have worn gloves when I was picking. However, that will definitely be changing as of yesterday!

Last night I went out to pick some delicious cantaloupe. We had quite a few that were ready. I was so excited about picking them. I got 2 five gallon buckets worth of cantaloupes. I couldn’t wait to go inside and eat one.

About halfway through picking the melons . . . I came across this:

I looked down, and it was crawling on my hand. So, I screamed, dropped the cantaloupe and the black widow spider. Somehow the cantaloupe managed to land on the spider and kill it. I had felt a slight prick, however, I really didn’t think much about it because I had knocked the spider off so quickly.

So, I went to finish picking the melons, bell peppers and tomaotes . . . but about twenty minutes later my hand started hurting. Then the pain started spreading up my arm, into my shoulder and back, and I got a really bad headache. Throw in some nausea, and I wasn’t feeling too hot. I came back in, and showed my hubby the spider. He made me go straight to the emergency room.

There I learned that unless you are really, really sick you don’t get anti venom because it can cause more damage than good. Apparently you just treat the symptoms with pain meds and muscle relaxers. I decided that I could tough it out. So far, so good, although I am getting rather tired of the headache. (-: People can have severe or minor reactions, and apparently I am one of the ones that does not have very bad reactions. Yay!!

So, this morning I spent the day trying to find out whether or not I could still nurse my son. I actually ended up calling a doctor in another state who is supposed to be the top doctor in the world for breast feeding questions. AND, she actually called me back personally to let me know that I could feed him. How awesome is that? I was really impressed!

So, the thing that I have learned . . . always, always, always wear gloves in the garden . . . especially if you are picking at night!

I did get a good reward though from picking those melons! Check out all the melon we scooped out today!