At least some plant in your garden is yielding fruits or vegetables faster than you can eat them. Freeze them, for later. Produce that you freeze yourself will taste better than what you can buy because you can grow the best-tasting varieties and harvest at peak flavor.
Of course, not everything freezes well. You wouldn't want to freeze lettuce or cucumbers or cabbages. And vegetables and fruits such as carrots, turnips, and apples aren't worth freezing because they keep well in a refrigerator or cool basement. Don't freeze too much of any one food: excess zucchini is just as tiresome in winter as in summer.
Even with vegetables that are good for freezing, usually you can't just pick them, then freeze them. Freezing puts microorganisms to sleep so that they cannot cause rot, but enzymes continue to work, slowly ruining food quality. Briefly scalding a vegetable with heat -- a process called blanching -- deactivates those enzymes.
Use steam or boiling water for blanching. Steaming needs less water to heat up, and results in less leaching of minerals and sugars. In either case, timing is critical: Blanch vegetables too long and they'll be mushy when you eat them.
Not everything needs to be blanched before being frozen. You can dispense with blanching tomatoes, peppers, corn, and onions. No fruits need to be blanched.
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