OK ....
Blanching - You need to put the food into boiling water and raise its temperature as fast as possible. We use a large pan with a lid. You need at least 6 pints of water per 1lb of produce.
You also need a blanching basket. This is just a sieve to hold the produce together.
The timing is pretty important so use a pinger or suchlike to keep it accurate.
So, plunge into the water which needs to be back up to a rolling boil in 1 minute or less. If you can?t do that ? blanch smaller portions. Then hold at the boil for the time required.
After this you need to get the temperature down as fast as possible and stop the cooking process. Plunge into a bowl of cold water for 5 seconds or so to kill the heat then transfer to a second large bowl of water with ice cubes in it, changing the water in the first bowl each time to keep it as cold as possible.
If the blanching water starts looking mucky you should change it. When this is depends on the vegetable.
When the food is cold, remove from the water and drain or dry off.
Cabbage - wash thoroughly, shred finely, blanch (about 1min 30 sec) and store in smallish quantites in freezer bags.
Beetroot - wash thoroughly, scrape skin off, chop or slice, blanch (until tender) and store in rigid freezer containers.
Peppers - wash thoroughly, trim and deseed and prepare however you'd prefer (halves for stuffing, strips for stirfries, diced for other stuff), blanch (about 3 mins) and store in freezer bags for sliced or diced and rigid containers for halved.
Cooking Apples - I tend to peel and chop or slice them, leave some as they are and do another batch sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, chuck them on a baking tray in a single layer as separate as possible, freeze and then bag up.
Hope this helps ...