Frozen green beans

It's was a busy week last week, it was a busy weekend, it's a busy week this week, and going to be another busy weekend....who am I kidding? This is going to be a hulluva September with all we've got going on!  We are kicking off tailgating season this weekend with the Iowa/Iowa State game (GO STATE!!) for my BFF's 30th birthday....there's so much to celebrate this month!!  Anyway, the posts are going to be short and sweet for a bit, but we'll get back in the swing of regular dinners at home here soon I hope...

But for now...I need to figure out what to do with my garden.  My green beans are overrunning the joint, I picked about 5 lbs this weekend, and we ate a bunch of them my standard way of spicing them up and making the szecuan green beans that the boys like so much.  But I had a TON left, and gave Grandma Theda a call to figure out what to do with them (I refuse to waste such a yummy veggie).  She wasn't a fan of freezing and gave me instructions to can them...alas, I had no time to can so just thought I would try a small batch of freezing and hope for the best. 

Found some instructions online that seemed simple enough.  Just have to blanch them, and bag them.  So here we go with snapping the ends off the beans before washing and cooking them...

Next step: blanching. Sounds tough, but is really very simple. Boil a big pot of water until it's rolling.  Throw the beans in for 3 minutes, and immediately drain and toss them into a pot of freezing water with ice in it to stop the cooking.  This releases the enzymes in the bean to prevent them rotting or getting dried out in the freezer.  Add them to your bags in 2 cup portions and freeze (making sure you get all the air out of the bags before sealing). 

As I said Ive never done this before, so can't vouch yet for how they turn out....but this is supposedly a pretty easy shortcut to canning.  I will hopefully get one more big batch of beans when I have some time to can and use Grandma's advice to can them with bacon!