Two Cents Tuesday: Freezing Corn

September 13, 2011 By 6 Comments

It’s corn season!  MMMMMM!  I love fresh corn.  Unfortunately, it all comes out at the same time.  Who wouldn’t like to have that fresh corn taste all year long?  Well, it’s really not that hard.  We have been freezing that fresh summer corn for years.  It takes a little bit of work, but really not much more than you would have spent preparing the corn for dinner in the first place.

It can also save you a lot of money.  We pay to join a CSA (community-supported agriculture) every year and we get baskets full of corn anyway.  This year we are getting our corn from Liberty Mills Farm in Orange, VA.  Even at the farmer’s market or supermarket, though, it can be ridiculously cheap.  We recently saw 2-pound bags of the store brand corn selling for $3 each.  To get the same amount of fresh corn will cost you less that $2 and a little bit of your time.   The best part, in my opinion, of freezing your own corn versus buying it from the freezer section is that you get to freeze the cobs too!  Those simple cobs that we normally throw out can make the most beautiful, comforting stock for soups, chowders, or risottos that can really bring a ray of sunshine to those winter doldrums.  Saving money and getting more for the money that you are saving.  I like the sound of that!

So, without any further ado, here is our simple process for freezing that yummy summer corn for the winter.

(1) Husk the corn and remove as much of the silk as possible.  (2) Place the corn into salted, boiling water for 2-3 minutes.  Fresh corn doesn’t need to be cooked much and it’s going to be reheated out of the freezer anyhow.  (3)  Pull the corn out of the water into a bowl to transfer it.  Admire just how gorgeous the corn is!

(4) Place the corn into ice water.  This will shock it to stop the cooking, keep the beautiful color, and cool it down so that you can handle it.  (5) Using a fork in the cob to keep your hands out of the way, place the corn into a deep bowl and slice the outer edge of the kernels with a sharp knife.  You are not looking to go all of the way into the cob; you just want the sweet tasty part.  If you go too deep, though, it’s ok, it’ll still taste good.  If you do not go deep enough, it’ll just make the stock that much better!  You want a deep bowl so that the kernels don’t cover your kitchen.  If you are doing a lot of corn, you might want a deep bowl for slicing and another bigger bowl to hold it all. (6) Admire all of your hard work and resist the temptation to add butter, salt, and pepper and dig in!

(7) Transfer the corn to zip top freezer bags and weigh into the desired portions.  10 oz is usually enough for me, Beth, and our three little ones.  As they get bigger, we are going to have to start adding more.  (8) The final result is over 3 pounds of cut corn and 11 corn cobs for the beautifully golden stock.

I hope that you all enjoy our simple little tip.  It’s easy, saves money, keeps your family a little healthier.  All in all, that’s Simply Budgeted!

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Healthy eating for the whole family

September 21, 2009 By 1 Comment

Do you eat your fruit and veggies? Do your kids?

We love fruits and veggies at our house. Awhile back I wrote about Community Support Agriculture (CSAs) and how our membership in one keeps us eating our fruit and veggies in my post titled, Fresh Veggies on a Budget.

We have made fruit and veggies a centric part of our kids diets from the beginning of their solid food eating days. As a result, we don’t have to hide fruits and veggies in food but include them in our regular meals. They are gobbled up as a result. We try to include a vegetable with dinner. My middle child loves peas and broccoli and corn and well just about any vegetable you give her. She isn’t even two and I often give her seconds of the vegetable! My oldest has her moods about what she wants to eat any way so we work with her on getting her to take a few bites of whatever we have.

As for fruits, my kids love fruits (as do I!) We generally have fruit in a big bowl on the dining room table. The kids can now crawl up on the benches and get fruit out at their choosing. Yes, at 3 and almost 2 they actually do this when they want a snack. Last night, my daughter wanted an apple and there were none in the house. Sadly for the first time in what seems like forever the fruit bowl was empty. She was going nuts for an apple. Thankfully, my husband dug a bag of freeze dried apples out of the pantry for her and that made her happy. I think she is going to be in pure heaven tomorrow when her preschool class goes apple picking. I foresee an apple tummy ache in her future! LOL

So my tips on keeping your family eating healthy, included those little ones:
Don’t make fruit and vegetables any different than any other food.
Offer fruit and vegetables often.
Go outside the box and try different fruit and vegetables.

My budget saving tip:
Fresh fruit makes an awesome dessert. Yes, dessert. Cut it up and serve it plain Jane. Spruce it up into a cobbler or something else. Find the best in season fruit and add a dessert to your dinner tonight!

This post is part of the Twitter Mom’s blogging contest you can check it out here. Horizon is the sponsor of this contest. Check out their new Little Blends product that combines fruit and veggies together!

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Fresh Veggies on a Budget

July 17, 2009 By 1 Comment

We love spring, summer, and fall for the fresh veggies we enjoy during that time. I grew up eating fresh veggies and being drug out to the farms to pick whatever it was my mom wanted to get that day (strawberries, blueberries, peas, peaches … we did a lot of picking).

If you are trying to eat healthy then you know fresh is better. If you look at your grocery bill, I bet you will be shocked at how much you are spending in the produce section. The problem with the produce section is that there aren’t coupons for that section of the store really. You can work with some sales and in season items are cheaper but it is still a lot of your grocery bill. (I am sure this will be a future post at some point to keep your eyes open for that.) If you hit up the Farmer’s Market, you can your goods at a better price and they are fresher but you generally need to get there early to buy what you want.

While living in Northern Virginia, we were introduced to the concept of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) concept. We had never heard of it but it seemed like a great idea. It was just my husband and me at the time but they had a small share and it could be delivered to our apartment. We figured out the cost and it was a little less than we were spending in the produce section at the grocery store per week. If we could send that money to a local farm, wouldn’t that be better? With that we decided we would give it a try. It was one of the best chances we ever took. As the fresh fruit and veggies showed up at our door each week, we got excited to see what we got and then would try to make extra trips to the farm for their pick your own extras. We stayed with that CSA, Great Country Farms (http://www.greatcountryfarms.com/), during our time living up in Northern VA and still miss visits to their farm.

Here in the Charlotesville area there are several CSA organizations to look into if you want to use one. Since the Charlottesville area by definition is so big, one of the first things I look at is actual location of the CSA and where their pick up options are. This website, http://www.vabf.org/csa.php, is a good resource for finding Virginia CSA organizations and one I used when we moved here.

Now here comes some personal opinion and experience. We are subscribers to Horse and Buggy Produce (http://www.horseandbuggyproduce.com/). This is our second season with them. (We did use another CSA organization our first summer in the area. At the end of each season, we have learned to evaluate if the CSA organization we used met our needs or if we want to consider another one for the next year and we did make a change after our first year here.) Horse and Buggy Produce isn’t a traditional CSA in that they don’t have a farm that grows everything they provide to their subscribers. Instead they offer up produce from various farmers in the area. For us, this have given us the wide variety of produce we love in our weekly share that we loved to get from our Northern VA CSA. It keeps us eating our veggies (and fruits!) and cooking at home which is a big money saver by itself!

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