Just another Day on the Farm

I needed just a few things at the store, and was once again brought to a stand still but this time it was in the veggie section, there to my surprise and delight was ten pds of carrots for $1.49.

So I looked twice and yes, it was Canada Grade 1, ok, so pick up the bag, its also Local to my province, went to see where it was grown, within 300 miles of my farm, not within the DDC but certainly within my own local province goals, I grew carrots this year but it was not a great year for them, so I do have DDC carrots available to me, but not enough carrots to last the winter overall.

So guess who picked up a great number of bags of carrots to process, lets stay within reason for a typical family, instead of going whole hog, like I do.. so lets work with ten pds. (Frugal Tip 1) Buy in bulk when you get the chance.

Top and tip the carrots, give them a good wash and then peel them and wash again, then I diced them into soup, stew chucks.

I am sure most of you know that you need to blanch carrots in order to freeze them so into a pot of boiling water with the timer set, I like three min for cut up carrots personally, I have seen it in books as low as two min and as high as five.. try out different times and see if you like the end results, if i wanted to eat them as side dish, I tend to go two min, if I want them for soups and stews, 3 to 4 gives me a result I am very pleased with personally.

Drain them, (Frugal Tip 2) Keep your carrot water for base of a nice veggie stock, then rapidly get your carrots into ice water bath, my general rule of thumb is hold long I cooked them, is eqaul to how long to ice bath them, so if cooked for three min, ice bathed for 3 min. I don’t change out the ice water, I just add more ice to it between batches of the blanched carrots.

Once they are cooled, you can bag them up into sizes that fit your needs, I did mine in four cups as that is about the right amount for a side dish for two, or as a base for a cream soup or for a large steel pot of soup or stew.. its flexable and fits what we will do with them, Once you take out as much air as possable, I recommend taking out the last bit with a straw to help really get that last bit out, then lay flat and place in your flash freeze area of your deep freeze if you have it, or lay out flat in a single layer and freeze solid before stacking them in a box labelled Carrots, and if you are really into your veggie freezer and use if for the amount of I do on the farm, I have a magic board (Frugal Tip 3) that we write what goes in, and how many bags, and then as it gets used, it gets marked off, and so you can see at a glace, what you have or don’t have.

Now, I had to do the math on this, so one pd of carrots cost me 7 cents, so currently in the store 1 kg, or 2.2 pds of carrots were currently selling for 4.99 a bag, and that was not local carrots, and made in china products.

Even if you want to say add in another 5 cents per pd for energy and the bag, its still a savings of $2.17 per pound of carrots doing it this way, so a total savings of 95%.

Last but not least, you are left with tops/tips and peels, now you can throw them into baggies in three cups lots for making all kinds of soup stocks, or if you have chickens/ducks/turkeys, they will love them, as will the pigs, the cow or the sheep.