Save space in the freezer. Cut the large tomatoes in half. Eggplant slice along into thin "tongues" and, removing the sidewalls, fold slices of a few eggplants in one pile. Mushrooms, before you send it into the freezer, dip into boiling water - this will reduce their volume. Freeze the fragile berries (blackberries, strawberries, currants), laying them in one layer on a baking sheet, a silicone rug or a flat plate. And already frozen and hardened, pour into a bag and return it to the freezer for storage. Put in one package exactly as much as you need for one cooking (mushrooms for soup, berries for compote, etc.), otherwise you will have to rack your brains how to use the defrosted residue: it's impossible to freeze fruits and vegetables again. Keep the blanks on a separate shelf of the freezer. If they are in close proximity to the fish, they will smell like fish. Conditions for storing frozen food are the topic of the article.
Defreeze fruits and vegetables on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. The more slowly they thaw, the better they will look. Experiment with frozen berries and herbs using ice molds. Fill the cells of the mold with water or juice, throw in every one or two berries - you get fantasy ice cubes for cocktails. Choose only elastic, undamaged, mature (but not overripe!) Fruits. Give preference to hard grades. Cut the large and firm fruits (apples, pears, beets, carrots) with the same circles not thicker than 0.5 mm, sweet pepper - along the eight. The more uniform the cutting, the better the result. It is better to remove the stone, otherwise with prolonged storage it can become a source of mold. Prepare the products for drying: berries (blueberries, blueberries, dog-rose), put in a strainer or colander, pour out with boiling water and dry. To the pulp of sliced pears, apples, apricots, peaches, carrots or beets, do not oxidize, retain color, and vitamin C. Place them for 15-20 minutes in a solution of ascorbic acid at the rate of 1 tsp (or 1 soluble tablet) per liter of water . Mushrooms before drying for about five minutes boil in boiling water. Dry fruit and vegetables in the sun: unlike grasses, direct sunlight is not harmful to them. Interrupt the process can not more than a day. If the sun has changed you, finish drying in the oven. Place a baking tray or grill lined with baking paper, with segments or whole fruits spread on it in one layer, at an oven temperature of 60-65 C for 3-4 hours (for carrots - 5 hours). If droplets of moisture form on the pulp, then the temperature is too high. Keep the oven all the time ajar, and stir the fruit and vegetables periodically. Check that the optimally dried product should be elastic, not sticky, but also not brittle.
The sun
In a tin can, fruit-vegetables lose up to 50% of useful properties, and dried in the sun or in the oven - only 10%. In addition, they do not have unnecessary chemistry. To ensure that the products do not lose their freshness, it is still not worth to buy vegetables and fruits by kilograms, so that they then lie in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator for several years. Buy only fresh products, and try to use them as needed, but the more often, the better.