To get corn ready, Condon shucks it and removes the silk, plunges it in boiling water for four minutes and then in ice water for four minutes. She has a special cutter to cut it off the cob, although a sharp knife will suffice. The blanched corn is ready for freezing and later eating.

She also freezes spaghetti and enchilada sauce, made with her garden tomatoes, simply making extra when she makes those dishes for her family.

"If I make spaghetti sauce, I always make a big roaster-full," she says. "Then I've got it for a month or more." Vegetable soup, made with lots of fresh herbs, also will sit in neatly dated bags in her freezer.

"I undercook it a lot and freeze it. When I bring it out and cook it, it will be so wonderful. That is such a great thing to pull out on a cold night," she says.

And she freezes stewed tomatoes and peppers, as well as plain tomatoes, prepared by blanching them and slipping them out of their skins before bagging.

Condon also keeps a little of fall's best for winter eating, making apple butter and freezing that. Her recipe, which calls for cooking down the apples in the oven overnight, is much simpler than traditional apple butter, which requires long stirring in a kettle.

John Bizarro, former owner of John's Restaurant in Boulder, has a special way to save zucchini.

Zucchini? After being stuffed to the gills with the prolific squash, it's not something you think you'd be craving in the winter. However, a taste of Bizarro's Zucchini Soup might change your mind, he says.

"The soup is so good that everyone loves it," he says. "We froze 30 gallons last year. We give a lot of it away. It's the only thing that keeps zucchini," he adds, pointing out that the squash doesn't freeze well.

To make the soup, he sautes zucchini in olive oil with onions, garlic and cilantro, also seasoning it with cumin and oregano. He then purees it with filtered water.

"It (turns) into a thick, light green, milkshakelike," he says. "(You add) a little squeeze of lemon when you serve it, so you get a little lemony taste." Although he usually eats it as is at home, at the restaurant he often pureed cilantro and chives with sour cream or buttermilk and drizzled the mixture on top as a garnish.

While Bizarro says the soup can be made with any zucchini, he grows a variety called Largo, which he says stays tender even when the squash grow big.

"The usual variety, when they get that big, you have to turn them into a lamp or something."

He also freezes corn, chard, a large Italian bean called Romano, and endive, blanching each type of vegetable before putting it in the freezer.

The endive is particularly good, he says.

"We saute it with black olives, capers, garlic and anchovies and add seasoned, toasted bread crumbs," he says.

And, he purees herbs such as basil with olive oil and freezes them.