What I Did Wednesday

(I think this suits me better than a Wordless Wednesday.)

One of the most important things I do every summer is to make sure that my chest-freezer is full of top-quality Ontario produce to feed my family all winter. 

(Just a little aside here:  When we went to Quebec earlier this month, the children asked me to bring strawberries to eat during the long car ride.  I was totally disappointed to only find berries from California in the grocery stores here in Toronto.  Yet, in the tiny grocery store where we stopped in Quebec, we picked up strawberries, raspberries and blueberries that were ALL grown locally.  Imagine that!  A grocery store that stocks local produce!  Not in Ontario, apparently.....)

I store the produce in Ziploc medium-sized freezer bags.  Already I have 12 bags of strawberries, 6 bags of blueberries and 8 bags of brocolli.

This week I nibbed, cleaned, blanched and bagged a bushel of green beans.

I picked up the beans at the East York Farmer's Market at 10am and it literally took me until 6pm to finish those beans!  The entire time that I was standing at the counter I kept thinking "My mother would NEVER have taken this long to blanch and bag a bushel of beans!" 

Aaaah, my mother.  Back in the day, she would have had the beans picked (out of her own garden) by 7am and the entire bushel would have been in the freezer before noon.  I just can't get it together to work that hard or that fast.

But now we have 16 bags of beans in the freezer!  This week I will make some peach jam and next week I am going to make oodles and oodles of spaghetti sauce with fresh Ontario tomatoes, onion, peppers, garlic and basil.

Now, sing it with me:
Good things grow-ow-ow
In Ontario!

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