Preserving: Broccoli

Yesterday we woke up to a bunch of broccoli on the front porch, which we found out later was from a generous neighbor. Getting surprises like this is always a blessing. So what do you do when you get this much broccoli early one morning?

Well you eat some fresh of course. Then with the aid of a little helper you blanch and blanch and blanch. We just put batches (about 2 cups) of broccoli into boiling water for 2 minutes then quickly dumped them into an ice water bath. Once the broccoli was cool we laid it out on a clean towel to dry a bit.

Most of the broccoli went into bags in the freezer for dinner use later in the winter when fresh veggies cost more. I'm already thinking of different soups and casseroles to add it too.

We also saw this recipe for pickled broccoli and thought we'd try a little. We just did half the recipe and ended up with three little 8 oz. jars in the refrigerator. I'll let you know how it turns out.

And of course, we set some aside for our dinner of potato broccoli cheese soup. I did not get a picture of it because we all ate it too quickly. I think we will definitely be repeating that soup as the weather gets cooler but in a bigger batch next time.