At the end of each storage season we find ourselves unable to part with our seconds onions.  These are onions with blemishes or with a soft outerlayer.  They aren't first quality and can't go to share members, but they have perfectly good onion within.  At the same time, it's also the time of year when our stores run low in anticipation of the new harvest.  In order to keep our members in local organic onions, we slice and freeze these seconds.  The bagged frozen onions  may be used in any saute or soup you are making.  They are great to have on hand.  Just take bag from freezer and saw off a chunk of the thin sliced onion in the amount you need for your recipe and toss in your pan or pot just like you would fresh onion and simmer til soft. If you don't need the whole bag of sliced onion, return the remainder to the freezer.

Our Frozen Green or Red Peppers are grown on our farm, come in from the field and go straight into the freezer. Our peppers are washed, chopped, bagged and frozen within hours of harvest.  Frozen peppers tend to not have the same rigidity as fresh peppers so they aren't great in salads or where you need crisp vegetables.  But they retain all the flavors and yummy summer goodness and are great in all cooked dishes.  We find it best to use the vegetables straight out of the freezer and into the pan.  If you aren't using the whole package you can saw off a hunk and use just what you need.  While the peppers are frozen, or just off frozen, you can easiuly chop them to whatever size you need if the pieces are too large for your dish.  Kids love the red ones frozen as is, they are that sweet. 

Our frozen broccoli was blanched for a minute or two in our kitchen before cooling and freezing.  It is not a substitute for fresh broccoli in salads or places where you really need the veggies to be crisp.  But they are fantastic for pastas, burritos, casseroles, quiches, soup etc. To reheat, bring some water to a boil in a pot and put in all or a part of the bag of broccoli (you can saw off chunks of frozen if you don't want to use the whole thing). Heat for 2-5 minutes, testing each minute after 2 minutes to see if it has reached the tenderness you seek.

We grow several verieties of cauliflower on the farm including the traditional white, a yellow known as cheddar, a purple variety, and the beautiful Romanesca.  All of these may be used interchangeably in recipes of course.  We freeze our summer cauliflower so that our members have greater diversity in winter.  Frozen cauliflower is great in many recipes including soups, stir fries, stews, casseroles, etc.  Our frozen cauliflower is blanched briefly before freezing so is partly pre-cooked, cooking times for recipes calling for fresh cauliflower will be shorter.  You will want to test your cauliflower when cooking for perfect doneness as some recipes will want cauliflower more or less tender.  Store your frozen cauliflower in the freezer until you are ready to use it.  I like to chop for recipes when it it still partly frozen