Freezing Fresh Veggies

 So I always get a little too excited when I buy my produce. I buy way more than we could ever eat in a week or two then the food goes bad and I have to throw it away. And who wants to waste money? That's what I do every time I throw food away and it pisses me off! So I had an epiphany! Why don't I just freeze them? I used to buy frozen veggies all the time. So that is what I did! Here is how to freeze veggies. This is pretty basic for most vegetables. I for the most part I only buy broccoli, spinach, kale, carrots, cauliflower and corn (my husband is a pretty picky eater) and this is what I do to freeze them!

What you will need: Prepped veggies, Pot to Boil water and Blanch, Bowl of Ice water and freezer bags.

First, you will want to wash and cut your veggies like this.

Then you will want to have a  pot of  water boiling. Now we are going to blanch the veggies. The point of blanching is to cook the veggies just a little bit so they will keep their color and last longer. How you will blanch, is to just drop the veggies in the boiling water for just a few seconds. I would say about 5 seconds. 

After blanching the veggies for a few seconds, you want to take a large spoon or  tongs to  take the veggies out of the boiling water and directly into the bowl of cold water. This will help stop the cooking process. You will notice the broccoli looks cooked but if you were to touch them they are still pretty hard. Keep the veggies in the cold water for about 2 or 3 minutes. Until the veggies aren't warm anymore.



I didn't take a picture of this but after the veggies are cooled, you will want to drain the water from the bowl. Now you will we need to dry them. I just lay them out on the cutting board, take a paper towel and just towel dry them. You want to try and have the least amount of moisture as possible. 

Now that your veggies are dry we will put them in the bags! Depending on the size of your family  will determine the size of bags you will want to use. I use the smallest freezer bag size (like a sandwich size, whatever that size is lol) since there is just two of us. Make sure to label your bags with the date so you know how old they are. You should try to use these with in 6 months. After you have filled your bags with the amount you want and labeled your bags it's time to seal them! If you have a vacuum sealer that is great, but I don't. If you have one of those, use it now. You want to get the air out of the bag to prevent freezer burn. How I get all the air out of them is I stick a plastic straw down to the level of the veggies, seal the bag at the top except for where the straw is, then SUCK! Once I have all the air out I just pull the straw out with my mouth and have my fingers ready to seal the bag shut. It works great! And its so cheap! Ha Ha
(The picture above is before I used the straw to get the air out)

There you have it! Super easy to do and good for multiple reasons. If you are like me and buy more than can possibly   be eaten before it goes bad, or if you want to buy seasonal veggies that wont be out in a few months. You can freeze them and have them months from now and they still taste delicious!

Hope this helps! Have a good day! 

A little about me...

My name is Megan! I love my life and pretty much everyone in it! I am 22 years old and married to the most amazing husband (I know everyone says that but for real he rocks my socks off!). My husband's name is Eric, he is 25 and super hot! We got married when I was 19 about 2 1/2 years ago in the Salt Lake City LDS Temple. We still reside in the Salt Lake area where we have bought our first house. Now I will go back a few years and tell you more about me and what I have done to get where I am today. A happily married wife.

So about two weeks before I graduated high school back in 2009 my dear grandfather passed away quite suddenly. He was having minor heart problems that needed surgery to fix(I say minor but really is anything minor when it has to do with your heart?). I remember going to visit him the night before he went into surgery , I was a moody teenager that was probably texting my boyfriend the whole time. Oh how much I regret that! Right before we left I gave him a big hug and told him how much I loved him. Now looking back I wish I held him longer, tighter, took his face and looked into his eyes and really made sure he knew how much I loved him. The next day he went under, the surgery went great! The only problem was his blood was too thin to clot and he never woke up. We had to pull the plug. My whole extended family and I gathered around him  until he passed. It was horrible.

He was so exited to see me graduate just a few weeks later. I remember thinking, "How am I suppose to do this? How am I suppose to go through with one of the biggest accomplishments of my life without him there to see me and to help me?" He was such an example to me and I know that more now then ever. And I think that's what I was suppose to take from it. To be like him, to find a husband that was like him, to show love and kindness to others like he always did. He was the best example of being like Jesus Christ.

Well life went on and I graduated. I was happy to be done with high school and knew I had to go to college but didn't really think I could do it. I always got good grades but college seemed so scary! I decided since I could get grants for the local community college I would go there to get my generals then move on to a University after that. My first semester at SLCC (Salt Lake Community College) was better than I expected! I got really good grades and it wasn't as hard as I psyched myself up for. But I wasn't working and I had to get a job. I had a car payment and my savings account was getting low.

I got a full-time call center job in the middle of the semester which, at the time, paid very well! I later realized why it paid so well, it sucked! Working full time took a toll on my grades at the end of my first semester I barely squeaked by. By the time it came to register for the next semester I knew I couldn't work and do school at the same time. I decided to work. I was use to getting those good paychecks and I didn't want to give that up quite yet. I thought, "well I am young, I can go back to school in the Fall.".

Well guess what? STILL haven't been back. I would love to say that it was a big mistake, but I don't know if that is true. I mean I am still trying to scrape up the time and the money to go back. And I hate that I could be done by now. But at the same time, I wouldn't have all that I have now. I always hated that in school, I couldn't just take the classes I wanted, I had to take all these prerequisites that had like one chapter to even relate to the class I was working to get to. I know you need to work hard for what you want, so I did that. Just a different way. I started working when I was 15, bought my first car at 17 and my first house at 20. I could have waited till I graduated from college and got a great job to buy this stuff. But I didn't. And I am glad that I didn't. It has totally molded me into the frugal, money-smart person that I am today.

Moving on. I met my sweet husband Eric right after I decided to take that second semester off. We actually grew up just down the street from each other but since we were 3 1/2 years apart we never really crossed paths in school or anything until I graduated and blossomed into a young adult. We went to the same church so he started to notice me. He got my number from a friend and started to text me. We went on our first date a few weeks later and have been inseparable ever since! We literally saw each other every day. I think the first day we didn't see each other was like 4 or 5 months later.

I knew I was going to marry Eric about 2 weeks after our first date. It was weird but just felt right. We got engaged 6 months later and married 5 months after that on January 7th 2011. Coldest yet most amazing day of my entire life! The Salt Lake Temple was so beautiful and being able to have Eric take me there was more than I could ever imagine!

Everyone says the first year of marriage is the hardest. Well for whatever reason God decided to make it easy for us. Our relationship couldn't have been better. We didn't live with one another before we got married so everyone warned us it would be so hard to get used to. But it just wasn't. Don't get me wrong, we had tons of trials. But being with one another just wasn't one of them. We were able to face everything together. I couldn't have asked for a better team mate.

We lived in a small apartment in a sketchy apartment complex for about 6 months. It was cute and I loved it there because that was where we stared our marriage together. After about 6 months we thought about buying a house. We got approved from the bank, hooked up with a Realtor and started looking at homes. Well here comes our first big trial, Eric lost his job. I couldn't believe it! Everything was so perfect for us. We just had an offer accepted for home and we found someone to take over our lease on our apartment. Well, life had a different plan for us.

We turned down the home and moved out of our apartment since we had someone to take over the lease. We moved in with my grandma for a few months and just saved all our money while Eric tried to find a new job. He got a job offer about a month and a half later and we were able to start looking at homes again! I was hesitant to look so early after he got this job but something just kept telling me that we were suppose to. We looked at so many houses the next few weeks! They were all mushing together and it was hard to keep them straight. Finally the last house we looked at was almost exactly 1 mile away from my family's house. It was a good size, very nice inside and was only about 8 years old. It was in our price range because it was a foreclosure. Everything about it felt so right! We made an offer that night and less than a week later got the call that it was accepted! The next 30 days flew by with appraisals and inspections and meetings with the lender. So in September of 2011 we bought our first home! We love it and I can't see us ever leaving.

Now on to big trial number 2. We had been in our home about 5 months and once again Eric got let go. It was a total shock again and we were at a total loss at what we were going to do. Luckily I had thought about this situation before we set a limit on how much we wanted to spend on a house. I remember thinking, if one of us lost our job we need to be able to pay all our bills on one income. So we budgeted for that. Of course its still scary for it to actually happen rather than when it was just a theory. Even though Eric got unemployment it was hardly enough to pay for the utilities. But we were grateful for it nonetheless. For 3 months we managed to pay all our bills without even touching our savings. Yes, I prepared for it but I still give the credit for us making it to the blessings of tithing! Which I will have to go more into in a later post.

So after 3 months of unemployment Eric got a job! It was actually at the same place I worked at as a weekend dispatcher. It made us sad that it was a Friday-Monday job and that we wouldn't be able to have our weekends together, or go to church together, or even have one day off together for that matter. But it was a job, and we weren't really in a place to be picky. It paid higher than Eric and I have ever made and we would still have every evening together so he gladly accepted the job. He has been there for just over a year now and still working weekends. We keep waiting for weekdays to open up but they just aren't available right now. But I know if he just puts in his time, it will come. He loves his job and loves the company so we really aren't in a hurry to try and find him another job. Plus we get to see each other at work on Mondays and Fridays so that is fun!

Well that is pretty much up to this point in our lives. There are of course other trials we face everyday but I don't want to share that quite yet. I will be posting a bunch of different things on this blog. Anywhere from DIY to saving money tips to just things that are going on in our lives! Thanks for reading!

Megan.