Freezing Asparagus

A few weeks ago I went to the asparagus farm.  Asparagus is in season in Indiana in May and I bought ten pounds of it.  I don't have a pressure canner so it was necessary to freeze it.   Since I do not have a chest freezer my experience with freezing is limited.  In my personal library I have a book called Stocking Up by Carol Hupping.  Mine is the third edition so I think it was published around 1990.  In it is the following page:

I took a chance and put about a half a pound of asparagus in quart bags with two tablespoons of water and microwaved them for three minutes and put them in the freezer.  Since then I have eaten one.  Which I defrosted enough to easily get it out of the bag by moving it from the freezer to the fridge for a day.  After taking it from the zip lock bag, placing it on a plate with some seasoning,  and microwaving it for two minutes I had a wonderful serving of asparagus.

It was all very easy.  My concern is that there is a lot of bad press about microwaving plastics.  In fact I generally avoid plastic and use only glass in my microwave.   But blanching the asparagus in this way was really easy and the results were great. 

Does any one have a thought on whether blanching vegetables in this way before freezing is safe?

Spring Planting in North East Indiana

Although I needed to be cleaning house on my day off  it has been an exhausting week at work and my temperament has not been the best the last couple days.   Besides that,  I am the only one in the condo complex that I live who had not planted flowers this spring.  I never plant before Mother's Day but we have had such a mild late winter and early spring that everyone else has their places looking like it is June instead of mid May.   Therefore I decided to spend some time this afternoon  purchasing and planting my flowers and herbs.  It was a beautiful day to do so and I drove out into the country south of town to the Amish greenhouse.   Of course I got lost and had to make a phone call to figure out what I did wrong.  But after some time of driving in the beautiful country side I was at the greenhouse and wandering through making my selections.  I came home and planted them and here is the result of my efforts.

WhatWasThere - Put history in its place!

http://www.whatwasthere.com/
Not sure how this site works but it looks neat.

Book For The Week 5/11/12

Elisha's Bones

by

Don Hoesel






About four am Thursday morning I finished reading Elisha's Bones by Don Hoesel.    Obtained a month or so ago off the free list at Amazon for my kindle,  I picked it because I have read books that combine mystery and archeology before and enjoyed them.  This novel held my attention.  There is quite a lot of violence in it and the main couple in the story go from one crisis to another.  Many people close to them are killed.   I was suspicious that it might have a religious twist and in the end it does end with a miracle.   Never the less it is not a book that I would categorize as "Christian Fiction".  It is G rated as far as sex and it refers to God some, and an old testament story is the basis of the novel,  but does not refer to Christianity except to note that the one person was raised protestant and the other Catholic.   It is not a book that I will put to the top of my favorite books I read in 2012 list but it provided decent escape.  And I read later than I had planned a few nights caught up in the excitement of the plot.  Click on the title of the book and the author's name to follow links to more information.

Dinner And A Movie 5/5/12

I went to visit my daughter this weekend. Since I am working next weekend we celebrated Mother's Day this weekend. On Saturday PM we used a gift certificate I had received for Christmas from my son Nicholas and ate at The Cheese Cake Factory. http://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/ We ordered off the skinnelicious menu and shared our desert so we didn't make tooooo awful bad of choices. Then when we got home we watched this movie. I am not ready to go out and buy a juicer but it is amazing what these men accomplished. It is a motivating movie that will encourage people to stay on whatever diet they choose.

Book For The Week - 05/01/12

Wrench: A Novel

by

Dolen Perkins-Valdez































Wench: A Novel by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the book selection for my library reading group for May.  I started reading it on my kindle a couple weeks ago thinking it would take me awhile to get through it.  Instead I flew through the book!  It very much held my interest.  I can't really say I liked the story line.  It is an extremely sad one.   It is about a resort in Ohio prior to the civil war where southern slave owners took their favorite slave girl on vacation without their wives.   Historically this resort existed.  But the story is about the friendship of four fictional  black women who were taken to this place year after year from their various home plantations.   The lesson of how friendship among women can get them through a lot is one of the underlying themes of the book.  There is only one man in the entire novel who is not a total pig.  He is a slave and works with horses.  All the white men are despicable.  Even the one who is supposed to be the nice slave owner is awful.  The book is full of abuse and difficult to read at times.  But the story flows and the strength of the women in the story is clear.  The resort is a real place in history and when it closed it was purchased by a religious body who turned it into a school for black people. Today it is a University.  http://www.wilberforce.edu/home/home.html
Click on the book title and the author's name to follow links to more information.  The following is a video that features the author.