In the Kitchen with Linda & Dinner Menu

I haven’t shared what I’ve been up to in the kitchen in quite a while. But I’m still here. In the kitchen. Making dinner. lol I still make a weekly menu. It’s a sanity saver, for sure. If you don’t make a dinner menu, I encourage you to try it. It saves me from the what’s for dinner stress.

On Friday, we were given a lot of broccoli and cucumbers. And when I say a lot, I mean a LOT.

That’s like only half of what we had. I blanched and froze all of it. So expect to see broccoli on my dinner menu a lot. lol

I love how bright the green is after blanching.

Now that’s a LOT of broccoli! I forgot to count the packages before I put them in the freezer. I did some bags sized for a side dish, and some bags sized for casseroles, or when I will be serving more people.

I vacuumed seal most of the bags. I ran out, so had to finish 4 or 5 bags in regular freezer bags. I need a new vacuum sealer, I’ve worn mine out. It didn’t do as good a job vacuuming on some of the bags. Let me know what your favorite vacuum sealer is in the comments so I can start shopping.

We had 6 bags of cucumbers. We can eat a lot of cucumbers, since we like them for snacks, too, but can’t eat that many! So I started researching if I could freeze cucumbers. I found out you can! I made a batch of frozen cucumber salad to try. It tasted good before it went in the freezer, so we’ll see if we like it later this week. If so, I’ll make more!

I saw that you can freeze plain sliced cucumbers for putting in drinks, and for making dips. So I flash froze a large tray. Then repackaged in a bag when frozen. I froze the cucumber salad in bags, too, as they take up less room in the freezer than containers.

I read that the best way to store cucumbers is to wrap them in paper towels, and place them in the fridge in bags. so my husband helped me roll the cucumbers in paper towels and bag them. I left one bag alone, so I can compare them to see if the paper towel covered ones really last longer.