The canning/freezing season is now upon us. Every summer is my busy season when it comes to fresh produce. I do a lot of freezing to be able to make healthy smoothies for S all year long. In each smoothie he gets 8 servings of his fruits/vegetables and 1 dairy serving. There are always 4 veggies, 4 fruit, and 1 4oz. yogurt.
When S was a baby I started by making all of his baby food from produce we grew in our garden or what I was able to get at our local farmer’s market. As a baby he ate all kinds of fruits and veggies you can’t find in stores. For example fruits and veggies not normally found in stores he ate would be: cauliflower, red beets, zucchini, summer squash, pumpkins, apricots, raspberries, strawberries, cantaloupe, and watermelon. Of course, I made the regular fruits and veggies: broccoli, peas, green beans, carrots, plums, bananas, peaches, pears, applesauce, and I am sure there is more I forgot.
B picked the garden and got out 11 zucchini today. I have quite a bit of the zucchini smoothie mix I made from last year still, so I decided to not make more for this year. I checked and also had 11 bags of shredded zucchini still in the deep freezer. So I gave three zucchinis to my neighbor and shredded the rest for my mom. Since I have a food processor and it was already out, it was easier and less time consuming for me to do it than for my mom to shred it by hand. Crazy, right?
8 Zucchini
I broke them down the same as I do summer squash, washing them all thoroughly with soap. You can peel the skin off of them, but it has so many nutrients in it I left it on. When S was a baby I peeled them until he was a year old. I then quarter them lengthwise and deseed the zucchini. It is okay to leave the seeds in, but we prefer to take the seeds out.
Quartered Lengthwise-Zucchini
Onto the food processor it goes using the shredding blade. S loved to be in control of making all the zucchini shred. I just dumped the shredded zucchini in a bowl until it was all done. I filled freezer bags with 2 cups of shredded zucchini in each. That is what is required in zucchini bread, so this makes it easy to make all winter long. Just dethaw a bag and add it to the recipe. There was a total of 10 bags.
S shredding-Zucchini
10 bags shredded-Zucchini
I have made zucchini bread with fresh zucchini and frozen zucchini, and you cannot taste the difference. B can never tell. I can tell when I am making it and have to add more flour with fresh because of all the excess liquid I need to account for. Frozen zucchini I just squeeze 75% of the liquid out of the bag.
I love freezing zucchini! I love when I can make zucchini bread / chocolate chip muffins all year long! I’m always given about a dozen GIGANTIC zucchini every year so freezing them is a great option for me!
We get so burnt out on zucchini bread that I actually end up making it and giving it away to anyone who will take it. Last year we made mini loafs and gave those out to our neighbors for Christmas. This year we did not have a huge crop of zucchini (so far). Last year we had so many we couldn’t give them away fast enough. No joke we probably got 20-30 good sized zucchini.