Frozen Assets

The spinach--what hasn't bolted, that is--has gone crazy. Every few days I have more large leaves that can be harvested, though I will have to stop sometime so as to not divest the plants of all of their leaves. I have officially blanched and frozen more spinach this year than I ever have before, though the amount is still fairly small compared with the number of months one has to go without fresh spinach. But that's okay. No matter how small the amount of food I manage to harvest and process this year, it'll be more than we had in previous years.

With practice, I've gotten the steam blanch/freeze process down pretty well, and can keep going at a reasonably steady rate until it's done. Chop, steam, dunk in ice water, pack freezer container, repeat. Or rather, chop more raw spinach while the last batch is steaming, then dump newly steamed spinach in ice water, dump newly-chopped raw spinach into the steamer basket, set the three-minute timer, then start chopping again. It goes smoothly enough once you have the hang of it, and it doesn't take nearly as long as canning. However, it does require a freezer, which requires both space and electricity, so there's the trade-off. We buy green (wind) power from the power company, so I hope my use of the freezer isn't too heinous.

Saturday, I made a rushed trip to the farmers' market, and then we went out to a nearby local farm and bought some frozen whole chickens. They're raised humanely without hormones, so they should be great. The only downside is that I really prefer to just buy boneless chicken breasts, not the whole chicken. I don't like dark meat, but the rest of my family does, so we'll see how I deal. I'm angry at the large factory farms that participate in a system with such inhumane and unsanitary methods. If it were really safe, humane and sustainable to buy packaged chicken breasts, I'd much prefer that. I'm not looking forward to having to skin, butcher and de-bone whole chickens when all I really wanted was a few chicken breasts to roast in the convection oven. Using the whole chicken on a regular basis sounds like way more work than I have time for. I'll have to see whether I can find a green source for prepackaged chicken breasts to use at least part of the time, like when I'm in a huge hurry and need some meat to throw in a stir-fry fast. Actually, that's almost all of the time.

Well, I'll manage, or learn to manage. I'm astounded by how really spoiled we modern people really are, with our professionally butchered, prepackaged meats and other foods. My grandmother may not have known how to run an ATM machine or use a computer, but I'll bet she knew how to butcher her own chicken. That's more than I know, so there's one more thing my spoiled little self is going to have to learn. Tsk, tsk, what will I do?