Making Plans...

Last year, Shirley's garden was overrun with zucchini, and she had a bumper crop of blackberries. I took a bunch of the HUGE zucchini and shredded them up to freeze for future use. I did the same with blackberries. My family proceeded to make fun of me, because I had something like 36 cups of zucchini and 24 cups of blackberries. Well...it's gone! I've used it all up on things like blackberry cobbler, zucchini bread, and blackberry pie bars, so it's time to stock up. Here's what I did yesterday:

This year, I got smart. After I rinsed the blackberries, I laid them out on towels for an hour or so, then I spread them onto a waxed paper-lined cookie sheet and stuck them in the freezer overnight. This morning, I had individually frozen blackberries. Much more efficient than one big hunk 'o frozen blackberries. Right now, I'm at about 16 cups of blackberries. I heard this morning that there are more ripe and ready for the pickin'!
After shredding about 5 super-huge zucchini, this was what I had...

And then after squeezing most of the water out of it and packing it into four-cup portions, this is what I had...
Now, I've got a head start on my Christmas baking (little loaves of zucchini bread are always well-received), and I'll be able to make some more of those divine blackberry pie bars.