Freezing Summer Squash

I am definitely in preserving mode here in the garden. The Potager is producing more than we can eat of some things. Other things are not doing as well as I had hoped.
But this has been a great year for summer squash. My late planted yellow squash and ambassador zucchini is just starting to produce, but the white scallop squash and the eight-ball zucchini faithfully giving us daily squash. I have gifted it and baked with it and had it for almost every meal. And it still keeps coming. It's time to preserve it for the winter!
I honestly don't have time to do the baking and canning I would love to do, but freezing squash for a vegetable side dish this winter? That takes no time at all.
So before work yesterday I gathered what I would need:

A pot of boiling water, a bowl of ice water, washed squash, a cutting board and knife, metal baking trays and ziplock freezer bags.

 

When your water is rapidly boiling, cut up your squash. You don't want it sitting too long before you toss it in the water. It will turn brown. I did my white scallop squash first, then my zucchini.

Throw your sliced up squash into the boiling water and time it for three minutes. We are blanching the vegetables, not cooking them, so time them from the moment they go in, not when the water returns to boiling. Immediately after three minutes, plunge them in the ice water bath. I then drained the slices on a towel because I want to individually freeze them. You can reuse the same water. Just let the pot return to boiling before you add your next batch and add more ice to the ice water.

Lay the blanched slices on metal baking trays. I had more than would fit on my trays, so I just added the extras to freezer bags. These will freeze together, but can still be used. The ones on the trays will freeze individually.

The trays get popped into the freezer. Later that day, they are placed into freezer bags with as much air pressed out as possible. If the slices stick to the tray, just give the tray a good whack on the counter.

And that's it! All before work, not much clean up and I know I'll be happy to be adding these to my meals when the snow is flying outside. 

I am linking this up to  at AnOregonCottage.com.