There are a lot of statements above that I'd have to take issue with but it all still boils down to the title of your post - are you freezing them JUST to peel or are you looking to preserve them and delay dealing with them at all now and do you have the freezer space to store them in for some time? Using 50 lbs as an example - If you don't have the freezer space for 10-15 gallon bags of whole tomatoes then this whole discussion is moot. If your goal is simply to avoid hot water peeling then this whole discussion is moot as freezing gains you nothing. Freezing and the peeling benefits it offers is only beneficial/efficient when it comes to a) preserving small amounts until you have enough to make full batches of whatever, or b)quickly preserving large amounts to keep them from going bad so they can be dealt with at a later time. If you are only dipping 6 tomatoes at a time in hot water to peel then you need a major change in equipment and methods. A big stockpot with a basket or colander insert easily accommodates 15-20 tomatoes at a time. Into the boiling water all at once, wait 30-40 secs. lift it out and dump all into sink or dishpan filled with heavily iced water. Even a cooler filled with ice water works well for large batches. 10-15 min max to blanch and ice 50 lbs. of tomatoes. If you are burning yourself from splash then you need a major change in your methods of putting them in. If the cores are still hot when it comes to peeling them - even small ones - then they were left in the hot water far too long. b/c I'm trying to get to the rest of the recipe before all the juice separates (b/c I'm using my one big pot to blanch them in and the rest are sitting in a 8C Pyrex measuring cup Shows a distinct lack of proper equipment and methods. Before all the juice separates from what? It isn't juice, it is water that is supposed to be drained off anyway. Got a colander and a big bowl or cheap plastic dish pan for it to sit in? The frozen ones, once thawed and drained, are good for everything. Even salsa IMO. Want salsa only from fresh tomatoes? Fine. Makes no difference in the salsa flavor but the frozen and thawed tomatoes can be used in anything else. You never cook with frozen tomatoes since of course they will release lots of water. So will anything if it goes directly from freezer to cooking temps. Dave

I think it is just a matter of personal preference. My mom liked canned green beans. My grandmother liked them better frozen, so I grew up eating both kinds. My personal preference is frozen green beans, and that preference is shared by my DH and DS. I freeze them an hour or two after picking them and then when we cook them, they taste as good to me as fresh ones although the texture isn't exactly the same. With tomatoes, I don't usually freeze, can or even dehydrate a single variety at one time. All my batches of tomatoes are mixed batches, so the overall flavor is a blend of many varieties. With many canning batches, it takes many pounds of tomatoes for one canning batch so unless you have a lot of plants of one variety and they all have ripe tomatoes at once, you won't necessarily have the 15 or 20 lbs. of a single variety as required to make a batch of tomato sauce or stewed tomatoes. For example, to make one batch of stewed tomatoes (which will give you about 3 quarts or 7 pints of finished product), you need 4 quarts of peeled, cored, chopped tomatoes, or about 24 large tomatoes. The tomatoes that taste closest to their fresh-from-the-garden flavor are the ones I dehydrate, store in freezer bags in the freezer and then rehydrate by soaking in warm water for a few minutes before eating them. Although their texture isn't the same as fresh tomatoes, their flavor is and they are so good that I can hardly stand it. Having them to eat all winter long is such a treat. Frozen tomatoes that are turned into sauce or salsa after thawing are the next closest, and canned ones come in last. About the only tomatoes I can are those turned into salsa....and I made about 115 or 120 jars of salsa in 2010 because we eat a lot, give a lot away as holiday gifts and contribute quite a few jars to local fundraisers for volunteer fire departments and other types of charity fundraisers. For pasta sauce, I'd just as soon run the tomatoes through my tomato strainer and then freeze them in zip lock bags and thaw them as needed when I want to use them to make pasta sauce, pizza sauce, chili or a tomato-based soup or stew. We have three freezers---four if you count the freezer compartment of the refrigerator in our kitchen---and I consider them essential. Of course we do have a lot of money tied up in them, but we can unplug one once it is emptied out and not use it again until the next big harvest season, and I completely fill them up most years. Buying a freezer is a long-term commitment, but it pays off. I put hundreds of pounds of organically-grown, home-grown produce into the freezers every year. I'll use sugar snap peas as a quick example. We harvested 35 lbs. 9 oz. of them last spring. We probably ate 5 or 10 lbs. fresh and froze the rest. At the time, fresh organic sugar snap peas were going for prices ranging from $3.48 to about $3.78 a pound at our local stores IF you could even find organically grown ones. Would I have gone to the store and purchased 35.5 lbs at that price? No, never. Thanks to the bountiful harvest, though, we had all we could eat fresh and then froze enough to last us for months. Clearly, for us, the freezer was a good investment. It is the same thing with fresh fruit. When fresh fruit is in season, I both can and freeze a lot of it. That allows us to have our own organically-grown fruit year-round. I also watch for good deals on fruit in the stores or farmer's markets and buy and process a lot of it when the supply is high and prices are low. If we want a peach cobbler, we thaw out a quart of frozen peach slices put up in the freezer last summer and make it the way we like it....where we can control how much sugar is or isn't added to the fruit and we don't have to use any additives or preservatives other than the citric acid added at freezing time to keep the peaches from browning. Freezing or canning your own allows you to "skip" most of the preservatives, artificial flavorings or dyes, etc. that are added to many canned veggies and fruits. It gives you a lot more control over the quality and purity of your food. That's why I like doing it. In a good year, a packet or two of corn seed will give me a couple of hundred ears at least, and sometimes more, to freeze or can. Granted, there are times you will find ears of corn 5 for $1.00 or 10 for $1.00 in a local store, but that corn wasn't just picked that very day like mine in the garden is, and likely it wasn't raised organically. In every case, I have found the flavor of home-raised veggies to be superior to store-bought no matter how I process them....whether we eat them fresh or if we can, freeze or dehydrate them first and eat them later. Potatoes are a case in point. You may wonder how much difference there is in the flavor or a fresh potato from the garden versus one from the grocery store, and the answer is that there's a huge difference. Since potatoes hold a long time in commercial cold storage, by the time you buy them at the store, they can be months old. Even the potatoes we store for months in the root cellar will taste better and fresher than those purchased from the store. It is the same way with onions and even with garlic. When we go down to the metroplex and shop at Whole Foods or Central Market, my DH is always grinning ear to ear. Why? Because when he sees what they charge for the same organically-grown produce we have at home, he realizes how the garden does pay off big time after all. Or, he'll look at a little half-pint jar of jelly very similar to what I make at home and that jelly will be between $4 and $7 a jar, and he thinks of the hundreds of jars at home in the jelly closet. He's a thrifty Yankee so it took a few years to convince him that growing and preserving our own food was worthwhile, but once he could see how much similar organic food cost, he was sold on the idea. Eggs are another home-grown food we love. There's nothing in the store that compares to fresh-from-the-henhouse eggs from free-range chickens who are allowed to eat not only hen-scratch but also bugs and green plants. Their color and flavor are vibrant and yummy compared to the pale-yellow grocery store eggs. Clearly, for us, home-raised and home-preserved is preferred. However, it does take a tremendous amount of time and effort to put up a lot of food. Last year when the fruit trees produced 350 lbs. of fruit over about a 3-week-period I thought I would go crazy trying to process all of it in a timely manner....but I got it done and Tim even helped on the days he wasn't at work. Our summertime schedules are built around getting the havest brought in and processed, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Dawn

Congrats on the new kitchen and welcome to the Cooking forum! I also mostly cook for one - and I make my dog's food and freeze it. A Food Saver can be your friend! I freeze pork chops, chicken pieces, hamburger patties, and fish portions on a metal cookie sheet. Then I wrap the individually frozen portions in plastic wrap or wax paper and place 2-4 portions in a Saver bag and vacuum seal the bag. This way the food doesn't actually touch the vacuum bag and the vacuum bag can be reused. Another cost saving tip: freeze "plops" of tomato paste, mashed chipotle peppers in adobo, pesto, or other highly flavored ingredients that can be used in cooking or sauces. First freeze the plops on a plastic picnic plate, then when frozen, put in heavy freezer zip bags or a Food Saver bag and vacuum seal. Flavored butters can be done this way and frozen in large pats or put in very small plastic sauce containers. Look at the grocery store for foil mini loaf pans and pot pie pans. I keep these on hand and if used carefully they can be used many times. By freezing in a mini loaf pan first, the brick of frozen food can be easily slightly thawed and popped out just like a big ice cube. That freezer paper with one side coated is good for large pieces of frozen meat, but for long term storage, the vacuum sealer or Food Saver will be better at preventing freezer burn and deterioration from air getting to the food. Grainlady is right about freezing chili; I think I prefer it as a topping for a baked potato or taco salad than eating it just by itself. Soupy foods like chicken a la king or beef stew can be frozen (without the potatoes) and topped with quickly made biscuits for a quick, hot meal. Sometimes I will make taco-flavored ground beef to freeze, but most often I make a recipe of meatballs and keep in the freezer. Here is my favorite recipe: Freezer Stash Meatballs 3 lbs. lean ground beef 1 cups soft bread crumbs 3 eggs 6 tablespoons minced onion 3 cloves garlic, crushed 1 ½ teaspoons salt ½ teaspoon pepper Preheat oven to 400. In a large bowl, mix beef, crumbs, eggs, onion, garlic, salt and pepper. Shape into 11/2-inch meatballs. (A miniature ice cream scoop makes fast work of shaping.) Arrange in two 10-by-15-inch jelly roll pans. Bake in preheated oven until meat is browned, with no trace of pink and juices run clear, 10 to 13 minutes. Drain, let cool to room temperature, divide into fourths and freeze each portion in vapor-moisture proof containers. (I use my FoodSaver). Each portion serves 2. The meatballs can be added to simmering tomato pasta sauce for spaghetti and meatballs, used to make Sweet and Sour meatballs over rice, used to make a meatball sub, added to Swedish meatball sauce and served over noodles, or put in a soup. You might want to pick up some heavy duty plastic freezer storage bags at the store. And I always advise folks to double wrap any food you are storing in the freezer for long term. Teresa

It does sound lovely, except for the flat rolls, but enough mojitos and you're good, LOL. I love your description of your family, it sounds a lot like mine except we don't have a Mexican. Yet. Everyone from the college educated engineer to the police officer/firefighter to the old farmers, add a Jewish DIL on Elery's side plus his family from Tennessee and we've got a bit of everything. (grin) OK, the butterlake rolls recipe, easy as can be. Even San made a batch a few years ago and was successful and she told me she did NOT bake bread. Ever. This halves easily, I just use a whole egg, I don't try to halve it and I use all butter, no shortening. Butterflake Rolls 2 packages active dry yeast 2 cups warm water 1/2 cup sugar 2 tsp salt 6 to 6 1/2 cups flour 1 egg 1/2 cup shortening (use butter) 1/2 cup butter, softened. In mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add sugar, salt and 2 cups flour. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Add egg and shortening, mix well, stir in enough flour to form a soft dough. Do not knead. Cover and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, punch dough down and divide into 4 portions. Roll each portion into a 14 x 12 inch rectangle, spread 2 tbls butter over dough. Fold in half lengthwise and cut into 12 strips. Tie each strip into a knot, tuck and pinch ends under. Place 2 inches apart on greased baking sheets. Repeat with remaining dough. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour. Bake at 400 for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Yield: 4 dozen And congratuations on the "grown up" dinner, it sounds perfect to me. Annie