Keeping things simple with a smidge of Southern charm
Three cheers for the holiday season! Now that November is officially here, my mind has completely switched gears into focusing on all of the fun holiday festivities coming up. We’re just a few weeks away from moving into our brand new home, and I’m already making big plans for my family to gather together in our home to celebrate the season!
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Deer season just recently opened up here in the great state of Alabama, and many of my friends and family members are heading out to their tree stands tucked away in the woods in hopes of bringing home a white-tailed deer for their families to eat. Growing up in the south, I’ve always been surrounded by folks who hunt wild game as a means of providing food for their families. I was not born into a family of hunters, but I was lucky enough to marry into a family of avid deer hunting enthusiasts, and adopting a field-to-table philosophy has proven to be incredibly beneficial to our household in so many ways!
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With the changing of the season comes a whole new variety of delicious fruits and vegetables that are beginning to ripen, and one of my very favorite fall fruits to munch on and cook with is definitely cranberries. I always watch my local grocery store sales like a hawk around this time of year, because once they stock the shelves with those beautiful red berries, I swoop in and buy a heap of them to freeze and cook with all year long!
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If there’s one thing I can definitely say to be true about myself and my 3 siblings, it’s that we all have a huge weakness for Chinese food. It was always a sort-of unspoken tradition that when my two older siblings came home from college during the holidays, there was going to be one night of the week where we completely forwent any other plans of eating a traditional holiday meal and went straight to the phone book to find the number to our favorite local Chinese restaurant to order takeout.
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Growing up in the South, I’ve learned one quintessential piece of advice that has served me incredibly well over the years for just about any and every situation that has come my way:
Whether you’ve got a potluck event to attend, you’re in need of a sympathy dish to take to a family, or you’ve just got a hankerin’ for something sweet, you’ll never go wrong with making a pound cake.
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Have you ever been going and going so much that you had to sit down because your head felt dizzy? 2017 has been the busiest year of our lives thanks to our home building project, and as we’re nearing closer to the move in date, we’ve become even busier trying to make final decisions and purchases to make everything tie together just like we’ve always dreamed. I’m definitely at a point where I’m feeling under pressure and overwhelmed, and during times like that it’s often hard for me to be as productive as I’d like.
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Recently a sweet family friend blessed us with a sack full of beautiful bell peppers. She said she had a bumper crop of them this year and was up to her ears in them. She put up a ton of them in her freezer, so she needed to find a home for the remainder that her plants were continuing to produce. I told her I would LOVE to take them off of her hands, because I cook with bell peppers all the time!
I knew right away that the sack of peppers was way more than my family would be able to eat at one time, so I spent a little bit of time putting them up into freezer bags so that I could enjoy them throughout the rest of the year.
Putting up bell peppers is SO simple, as no blanching is needed to freeze them. First, take the peppers and wash them thoroughly and pat them dry.
Next, remove the stems and inner portions that contain the seeds and veins. (Tip: Before removing the stem, gently press and roll each pepper on the counter to help loosed the inner stem containing the seeds.)
Rinse the inside of each pepper out to remove any excess seeds that might have clung to the inner walls. Slice or dice the peppers according to your preference. Lay the cut peppers onto a baking sheet and freeze for about an hour. Transfer frozen peppers to a freezer safe bag. Frozen peppers are good for about 1 year after they were put up.
When you’re freezing fresh produce, it’s imperative that you use quality seal-able bags that are made to use in the freezer to help increase the life of the product and to reduce the chance of freezer burn. If you’ve got a bumper crop that you’re putting up, go ahead and stock up on freezer bags, and don’t forget to write the date on the bag so you know if the peppers are within their usable date!
Frozen peppers are best used in dishes where they will be cooked, as they will not maintain their crispness once they have been frozen.
Freezing more than just peppers? Checkout these other tutorials on how to freeze fresh produce!
How to Freeze Tomatoes | How to Freeze Carrots | How to Freeze Zucchini | How to Freeze Summer Squash
What seemed like a brief glimpse of glorious fall temperatures here in south Alabama last week has been completely diminished by these not-so-lovely 90+ degree temps this week. You know it’s hot outside when you break a sweat going out to your own mailbox! And even though we’re still experiencing wave after wave of this horrendous heat, I’m not letting it get me down. Instead, I’ve been feeling a little bit inspired to bring an extra element of heat into my cooking this week, and what better way to add a little spice into your life than by combining it with a twist on a true southern staple dish!
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Today was THE day, you guys! I’ve been waiting for months for the weather to cooperate and for it to finally feel like fall all day long, and today was definitely the first day this season that I enjoyed a beautiful sunshiny day with comfortable temperatures and a crisp breeze blowing through my hair. I drove around with my windows rolled down and basked in all of the glorious fall-ness going on around me, and it was absolutely divine!
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