You may remember Peter Piper from the last time I picked a peck and pickled all of it. Well, Peter has a sequel, and it's colder.
Here's how this one started. The freeze was coming, and I wandered out to the garden fully convinced there were hardly any peppers left on the plants. I was ready to say a few kind words and call it a season. Whoops. I picked a peck. (A peck, for the record, is a real measurement: a quarter of a bushel. I did not measure. I'm calling it a peck because the rhyme demands it.)
And this time I'm freezing it. Peter never mentioned this option, probably because nothing rhymes with "vacuum-sealed." Nobody is going to chant "Granny froze a peck of frozen peppers" around a campfire. But it's true, and it's happening, and my counter looks like a produce aisle that got into a fight with a bag factory.
Here's the fleet: gallon bags of peppers lined up like they're waiting for a bus. Green peppers, salsa peppers, cayennes, a little of everything, all very patient, all very unaware of what's coming.
What's coming is dicing. So. Much. Dicing. There's a moment, about forty-five minutes in, when you look into the big blue bowl and realize you've diced roughly a thousand green peppers and the bowl still looks full. That's the point where you either laugh or you quit. I laughed. Then I kept dicing.
And now, the star of the show: the FoodSaver. I will be talking about this machine at parties. You tuck the peppers in a bag, slide it in, and the machine pulls every bit of air out with the quiet determination of a vacuum cleaner that has finally found its purpose. Then it seals the bag flat and tight: no air, way less freezer burn, no mystery bag of sad, icy peppers in March. I've sealed bag after bag, and I am not even a little bit tired of that sound.
Everything gets labeled, because I do not trust Future Me with a mystery freezer. One of the bags says "Hot Sauce" on it, which tells you everything about what this winter holds.
The result is a freezer full of flat, tidy, ready-to-go bags: omelets, chili, fajitas, soup, and the stuffed peppers from my last pepper adventure. In January, I'll grab a bag, and dinner will smell like July.
Peter Piper, you're welcome to the pickles. I'll be over here with the freezer.
— Granny
📸 real photos
