So in February and March I was pretty good about filling the freezer with ready-made meals.

It’s getting time to replenish the supply, but I’m not often in the mood for heavy stews, lasagnas, chilis, etc now that summer’s here.

Anyone have any good ideas for recipes I can make and freeze that are lighter?

I like gazpacho, hot or cold. The smooth, pureed kind freezes better than the chunky kind. If you want some chunks in it, add them after you thaw it.

Here's a (somewhat over complicated) recipe: Gazpacho

You can also freeze hummus.

Summer is when I make, then stock up in the freezer, several varieties of tomato sauce, depending on what veggies and herbs are ripe along with the different kinds of tomatoes.

I still have 2 freezer bags full from last summer and ate something made with it about E O W all winter.

Fresh in the summer along with salsa.

Blueberries by the bag too...great with biscuits / eat some / freeze some

When I am grilling chicken I usually grill extra to cut up and freeze. Good on salads, burritos, tacos, or make chicken salad.

I've recently figured out a copycat for a local restaurant's "Tri Tip Salad". It turns out the marinade for the tri tip is a mix of their balsamic vinegar and oil salad dressing and the BBQ sauce they put on their ribs. It's really good, and when I grill the tri tip I grill and slice extra to freeze for later.

LilyLady's salsa is the BOMB!!!!! Just sayin...

I'm drawing a blank. My mother froze a lot of summer vegetables, but that only works if you're going to cook them the southern way. They ain't gonna come out of the freezer crunchy.

I like to cook yellow summer squash sliced into disks with a lot of onions until it's tender but not falling apart. Mama's advice was always to use more salt and pepper for this dish than you think it needs. Squash freezes very well that way. It comes out of the freezer ready to eat or ready for all those vegetable casseroles that my people love so dearly. (There is no vegetable that cannot be improved with a can of cream of mushroom soup and a topping of buttered Ritz cracker crumbs. This is the Eleventh Commandment.)

Beans, peas, and corn freeze well without the loss in texture you get with squash, but this mostly just moves the date-for-eating forward.

Tomatoes freeze well, if you're planning to use them in a sauce. None of this really addresses what you're looking for.

Other than that, I got nothin'. In summertime, most people want something light and crunchy, and the freezer isn't going to give you that.

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:

I like to cook yellow summer squash sliced into disks with a lot of onions until it's tender but not falling apart.

Deborah Madison has a great recipe for something like this, but she adds crumbled feta cheese and some chopped fresh herbs (basil works well) to the squash and onions. Delish! I do a mix of yellow summer squash and green zucchini.

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
Deborah Madison has a great recipe for something like this, but she adds crumbled feta cheese and some chopped fresh herbs (basil works well) to the squash and onions. Delish! I do a mix of yellow summer squash and green zucchini.

Yes, I like all kinds of summer squash cooked that way. My parents just didn't think it was squash if it wasn't yellow crookneck.

It's very hard to grow the usual summer squashes here, because the vine borers are just disastrous, so I've tried some other varieties this year. Borers destroy squash with cucurbita pepo ancestry, but cucurbita moschata varieties are supposed to do better.

Butternut squash is the only moschata variety that's common in the grocery stores. I'm leery of winter squash until I figure the borer thing out, because I just can't imagine a vine staying alive long enough for them to get ripe. However, trombocino and yuxi jiang bing gua are supposed to be good when picked as either summer or winter squash. I'm about to find out if they're as borer-proof as the spring catalogs claim.

This still doesn't address Jon's question exactly, but maybe it's a little closer.

I've been experimenting with pickling. I have an Indian cookbook with a couple of interesting recipes for carrot pickles, one that's pickled in water and the other that's pickled in oil. I tried the oil recipe and I thought the results were really tasty. I added some beets, since the other carrot recipe did that, and I think it would be good with lots of other veggies--turnips, green beans, peppers.

I could totally see a summer salad with chopped up pickled vegetables and boiled eggs and cold chicken over lettuce. Maybe boiled potatoes, too. The pickling oil would make a tasty vinaigrette.