Tag: vegetable

Okra: Love It or Hate It

I think of okra as the raw oyster of vegetables. You either love to eat it, or the thought of doing so makes you sick. It’s just so slimy!! Luckily, I love it. My favorite way to eat it is to make gumbo with it. I also like to boil it or saute it with onions and tomatoes. You can help to make it less slimy by cooking it with tomatoes.

My husband grows lots and lots of okra. There is more in another area of our garden. We freeze it and eat it all year long. The above picture shows our plants when they are small. It is just about time to trim the bottom leaves off the plants. Rubbing up against the leaves makes you itch, so he tries to keep the leaves to a minimum while having enough of them to produce the vegetable.

The actual okra pods start producing from the bottom of the plant and move upward as the year goes by. Okra likes really hot weather, which we have no problem with here in Texas in the summer. It will produce until a frost kills the plants.

Blanching Vegetables

Although we didn’t grow the corn shown in the picture, we do blanch and freeze many of our vegetables, especially green beans. The first step in blanching your vegetables is to pick and clean them. Then you want to separate them by size. Bring water to a boil and drop the cleaned vegetables in for about three minutes. Times may vary depending on what you are blanching. Then immediately scoop them out and dunk them in ice cold water for the same amount of time. After removing them, dry them off as best as you can and pack them into containers for freezing. One thing that we used to forget was to label the items with the name of the product and the date. Labeling helps to rotate the food we eat and always use the oldest first to prevent waste.

Unusual Vegetable

Several years ago, we started growing a vegetable that I have heard very little about. It looks like a lemon, but it actually is a cucumber. It has a much milder taste than a normal green cucumber, and it’s compact size makes it perfect for a snack. Sometimes I want to make a salad just for me, and most cucumbers are too big for just one person. This little cucumber is perfect!

So if you’re feeling a little adventurous or even just a little curious, you might want to try a lemon cucumber!