Thursday, June 9, 2011

Onions but no tears

I mentioned during my whiney post yesterday that I had onions to process.  On Sunday, my brother showed up with a huge bag of onions- probably about 25 lbs of them!  I was busy trying to get lunch on the table so I'm a little fuzzy about how he came about having them- but they are late season onions from Texas. Evidently they were the ones left in the field that were about to be plowed under and someone gleaned them (his inlaws who had been visiting????)  Anyway, we divided up all these huge onions.  Many were already starting to go bad so we knew they wouldn't last.  But they are big, beautiful things:
 Over a pound each.  I weighed two at 1.2 and 1.4 lbs each!!
Mom has been freezing onions for years so I use her method- nothing fancy here.  I'm not sure it is the 'right' way to do it but it definitely works.
Chop the onions into the size you would normally use for cooking- I use a medium dice for most things.
 Then lay them out on a jelly roll pan.
I cover this tightly with plastic wrap and stick it in the freezer for a few hours.  Then I transfer the onions to ziploc bags.  Freezing them on the cookie sheets helps to be able to take out what you need easily without them all sticking together although I have been known to just put them directly in to the bags.  These were pretty wet, juicy onions so I was worried they would stick.
These work really well for things you will be cooking.  They tend to get soft when they thaw so they're not really good to use 'fresh'.  But, this is a great way to preserve onions that aren't storing well.  We've had some really wet years recently where the onions started to spoil quickly.  This way, we have onions through the winter.
So, I've now got probably 7 lbs of onions in the freezer- for nothing!!  Woot!  I like that!!

I'm not sure how much the weather will cooperate with my grand plans for this weekend.  We had storms last night and this morning and then it seemed to rain all day.  We ended up with 1.7 inches of rain so I'm not sure any gardening will get done unless the sun comes out tomorrow and dries things out.
I am planning to do some more work on the coop tomorrow.  V is getting really stressed about his manuscript.  He is past his deadline for having it submitted and he's still working on it.  So, I really can't expect much from him this weekend.  The children, however, are a different matter......

Thanks to all of you for all your support.  Sometimes, I just need to whine to people who will understand (many of my co-workers and friends don't!!)

Oh, and to top it all off...  The roof of the house is leaking!  What a great week it's been!

7 comments:

  1. Many, many Happies! (it's already Friday here LOL)

    Spoil yourself today :-)

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  2. A leaky roof? Wow you can't get a break. I do my onions that way too since I don't have a place to store them, it works well!

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  3. I'll have to try that. We love onions cooked in everything, but i hate having them sit around. And a leaky roof? UGH.Let's hope the weather cooperates this weekend!!!
    Hugs,
    Kris

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  4. Seven pounds of free onions? That is a major haul! Leaky roofs are not fun. Hopefully, you will have had your ration of rain for a bit and you can finish all your other projects - and hubby can finish his manuscript - then you can take a break, take a breath and tackle the roof. In a perfect world, that is.

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  5. Sorry about your roof,but I am seriously jealous of your onion haul!

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  6. Do you know I have never tried freezing onions? Sometimes when making soup or such, it seems like chopping the onions takes more time than all the rest of it. How convenient it would be to have them all ready in the freezer! Thanks so much for the tip.

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  7. Yay, thank you! It does seem simple now but I always thought there would be a trick to it or something. My onions are too rotten to save this year so I'm bookmarking this for next year!

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