This is a great time for a “see what’s in your freezer” week. Start now. It’s the kind of thing you may never get to if you don’t, or if you think about it too much.
- Sunday: breads, english muffins, bagels….all those packages of “there’s-only-one -or-two-left-but-it’s-close-to -the-expiration-date-so-i’ll-stick ’em-in-the-freezer-before-they-go-bad”‘s. Find them all. Be ruthless. Either make some french toast, bread pudding, or feed it to the chickens (or fill in the blank with your housepet/garbage disposal of choice). Here’s what I found: 3 half loaves of bread, 2 cranberry thomas’ english muffins, 2 whole wheat english muffins, half a loaf of pumpkin whole wheat bread…half of above were freezer burned (read: tastes gross).
- Monday: frozen bagged vegetables. Mixed green and red bell pepper strips (became Chicken Stir Fry). Broccoli, 2 packages (one of which became Chicken, Broccoli, and Rotini). Peas. Corn. Also used package of frozen chicken leftover from a rotisserie chicken for the chicken, broccoli, and rotini recipe, and pasta from the pantry! nothing to buy.
- Tuesday: chili
- Wednesday: homemade Italian Sausage, Potato, and White Bean Soup.
- Thursday: homemade chicken and rice soup. became my supper for work that night.
- Friday: all sorts of frozen berries, frozen bananas, ice cream…made some smoothies
- Saturday: Some small, unidentified chunks of frozen meat (maybe beef or port); will get thrown into the spaghetti sauce to make a big “sunday gravy”
This is just one week of discoveries. I have much more space in my freezer now, and am resisting the urge to fill it back up. Shopping at local farm stands for perishables rather than the supermarket is helping.
How do you keep the clutter down in your freezer/fridge/pantry?
Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker 