We just acquired a chest freezer, so I'd like to get opinions on what produce is best preserved by freezing. Any ideas? Thanks.

Right now my freezer contains tomato sauce, peas, green beans, and green peppers. Broccoli and cauliflower freeze well also--I just can't grow them!!

I'd suggest Marian Morash's book, the Victory Garden Cookbook. It has a chapter for every vegetable. In addition to recipes, she tells how to store each kind including freezing. Most libraries have the book so you can check it out without buying it.

I do alot of freezing.... Peppers are great.. alot of times I will hull out the sweet peppers and freeze them whole... I make stuff peppers ( the freezing breaks down the fibers and makes them easy to cut into)
I also do the same with poblanos and make a mexican stuffed pepper for us out of left overs...But I also freeze whole ears of corn, peas, carrots, green beans,tomatoes, tomato sauce, freeze pesto(put them into icecube trays and once frozen drop them into a zip lock. Great to add to soups and sauces)winter squash, and eggplant parm..I have even frozen gazpacho and other vegetables soup....

My favorites are peppers, peas and beans.

Peppers -- cut them up to the size you want before freezing. Then whenever you a making a casserole, an omelet or spaghetti, just grab a handful of pre-chopped peppers from the freezer and pop them in.

Green beans -- blance briefly, then pop into ice water, then onto cookie sheets in freezer, then into bags. Sugar snap peas work great this way also.

I have heard of people freezing tomatoes whole. They supposedly get a little mushy, but still great for casserole, soups, etc.

Right now my freezer is mostly full of a 1/2 moose we got last week in Ontario!

Thanks for the ideas. Does anyone know the benefits of blanching, or why you should blanch certain vegetables but not others?

Here's a quote off the web from the NDSU (North Dakota State University)Extension:

To assure good quality frozen vegetables, most need a pretreatment called blanching. When you blanch, you briefly heat vegetables in boiling water or steam to inactivate naturally-occurring enzymes in the plant. These enzymes cause undesirable changes during frozen storage. The changes include faster nutrient loss, vegetable toughening, flavor and color loss.

The brief heating also reduces the number of microorganisms on food and enhances the color of green vegetables. Blanching sufficiently wilts vegetables like spinach and chard so they pack better. Without blanching, the flavor in vegetables changes noticeably.

I had no idea blanching would make so much difference. Sounds like it's pretty important. Thank you for the information.

I particularly like to cut matchstick carrots, peppers, onions, broccoli (sort of sliced thin), lay them out single layer on a cookie sheet and freeze, then mix them with snow peas and bag them up for stir fry or casserole veggies. So easy to use later!!

I do that with green beans and thin slices of zucchini. No blanching required, the beans keep well and the zucchini keeps as well as you could expect frozen zucchini to keep.

I also chop up chard and stir fry it in the wok in olive oil (smells so good) until it wilts (about 3 min, put the lid on). Then a quick rinse in cold water and pack in freezer bags and it freezes quite well.

Do freeze: peas, corn, chopped peppers and onions, applesauce, IQF berries.
Don't freeze beans or tomatoes, sweet potatoes.

I freeze everything I grow--snap peas--snow peas--green beans--yellow beans--zuchini (in chunks)--peppers--whole and chopped--hot peppers--bok choi--tomatoes (whole)--blueberries--winter squash (baked first). I only blanch the peas and beans and I use the microwave to do that (3 mins). I have a vacum pack system so everything gets vacum packed before freezing. I too chop up zukes in chunks--peppers--throw in some snow peas, bok choi, cherry tomatoes and onion pieces and freeze together for stir fry. The whole tomatoes (cherry and large and plum) I freeze to make homemade tomato sauce or stewed tomatoes. The drought did us in this year so no tomatoes to freeze this year the rest did fairly well.