Well, look what we found while rummaging through the freezer! Last summer, we stashed away two bags of sour cherries with visions of mid-winter fruit desserts...and then completely forgot about them. Has that ever happened to you?
I'm slightly embarrassed to say that this happens to me all the time. Toward the front of the freezer, I keep all the things that I tend to use most regularly: chicken stock, frozen peas and corn, loaves of bread, and tubs of ice cream. But this means that I completely forget what's been shoved behind! Out of sight, out of mind.
In the past, I've tried keeping a list on the side of the fridge listing all the contents of our freezer. This worked well - until I fell out of the habit of updating it!
If I'm being honest with myself, I know that things will always languish unless I make a plan for using them. I've cut down on the amount of refrigerated produce I throw away each week and improved my pantry space by curbing my spontaneous purchases at the store and market. I try to be more intentional with my shopping and stick to buying only things that I have a specific plan to use, even if it's a plan formed on the spot.
But the freezer still eludes me! Any suggestions? Any similar tales of neglect?
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I have that same issue. Once a month, I declare "cook whatever is in there" day and pull everything out. Everything that's spoiled, I throw away and stuff that's about to go bad gets cooked, usually into a soup or a muffin.
I do the same thing. I've had to throw out freezer burned chicken a few times and just remembered I threw a punch of quarter pints of jam in there last October. Whoops.
You mean I have to cook the ground turkey in the back of my freezer? I don't get homemaking points for just having it?
Geez.
I have so many half used bags of various produce: peas, spinach, peppers, etc. that its almost embarassing.
I once discovered a bag of mystery meat in the freezer, three small pieces carefully wrapped in wax paper within a Ziploc. To use it up, I thought I'd throw it into some fried rice. It turned out to be a piece of chicken breast, some pork chop and a bit of flank steak. Now I put different meats in different bags.
we're having the same issue...regular use items near the front, the rest a total mystery. i'm planning to do a major freezer binge over the summer. it's embarrassing how much food is out of plain sight, waiting to be enjoyed!
Thank God I found a bag of half-freezer-burnt raspberries last night...I was baking a crumble and didn't have enough fruits! Turned out great! :)
I clean out the fridge/freezer completely twice a year which helps. Also, I make a lot of chicken stock. So when I'm putting it in the freezer (which is about once a month) I go through what's in there and plan to use the oldest things over the next week or so.
But mostly I try not to freeze a lot unless I have a plan for it.
I had that problem this winter. I made pestos, herb butters, and packs of frozen herbs right before cold weather hit this winter. Now spring has rolled around, and I had completely forgotten about 90% of the things I stocked up on to brighten the dreary winter days! Oops!
I just cleaned out the freezer the night before last, removing all the old remnants of before I moved in with my boyfriend.
Bottles of mysterious liquor, tubs of something that might've been jam, sausages with the year 2007 inscribed on them.
Late last year, I started keeping a list on the front of the fridge for freezer items, it's helped quite a bit.
I just pulled out a bag of last summers raspberries that I'd saved for... something. I put them into a buttermilk cake and made a ginger honey and raspberry compote to top it. I don't know why I waited so long to use them! It's almost raspberry time again.
I love finding treasures in the freezer, things I tucked away at the peak of the season. It's like pennies from heaven to find a bag of fresh figs, a sack of fresh peaches or apricots lurking about. Yesterday I found a fresh papaya half in the freezer.
On a recent defrosting adventure I found 3 bags of peaches I froze in 2005 and a beef heart I kept saving for a science teacher friend. I'd defrosted the freezer several times since 2005, but I guess I just must have kept on putting them back.
I really need a better plan making sure I get produce in my fridge used up. I just threw away strawberries I was going to use for jam--it was a sad, sad sight.
Now that we have a freezer with drawers, this doesn't happen to me anymore. Every time I open one of those drawers, I can see almost everything in there, and by assigning a broad category of food to each drawer, I have a much better idea of what's in there.
My problem is of a different nature: my microwave just died, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to overcome the lazy factor involved in thawing frozen meals the old-fashioned way! So I may end up tossing a whole bunch of stuff in the near future after all. Anyone have tips in this department?
Husband and I went on a 3-week freezer binge during the winter. There were some things that had been in there too long, along with small bits and pieces that just don't jump out at us when we are looking for the usual suspects (chicken, etc.). We went through and cataloged all of the odd meats and other items, then spent some time on our laptops looking for recipes on what to do with it. We used up some venison, one sheet of puff pastry, a bag of macadamia nuts . . . the breakfast macadamia nut muffins we ate for 2 weeks were awesome.
@apfelmus - instead of tossing, consider freecycling your items. I had a frozen salmon fillet I was halfway through defrosting when I found out I had to change dinner plans. I couldn't re-freeze it and didn't want it to go to waste. I put it on freecycle and someone was at my door in an hour to pick it up and make an awesome dinner.
@apfelmus I recommend buying a new microwave :p
You can probably get a new microwave for cheaper then the price of all of that food you'd be throwing away.
@Apfelmus - what kind of stuff are you talking about throwing out? There are some things that I would just reheat in a conventional oven, straight from frozen, but for a longer time (there are plenty of supermarket foods that you can cook directly from frozen, and similar principles apply - just make sure your food is piping hot), covering with foil for the first part of cooking to reduce browning can help on that score.
@Apfelmus : if it's something small consider a bit of water (not hot, more like cold to slightly luke warm) in the sink and weighing down the frozen something in the water...30 mins to an hour would do, while you prep your other ingredients.
apfelmus: I've never owned a microwave and I do just fine using the stuff in my freezer. But if you can't just use the stove or defrost in fridge, which is what I do, then just buy another microwave. But really, you don't actually need one.
I clean out the freezer with each season which helps, and I keep a running list on the door. But the bigger problem for me is stuff I froze that I really didn't like and at some point have to face, I won't eat. It doesn't happen very often, but this morning I got out three quarts of beans and green soup that, because of the greens I used (I had a lot purple kale that was on the verge of going bad), is so completely unappetizing to look at that I will never be able to face eating it (I've already eaten a couple of quarts and it was tough). I have a very tough time throwing out food, but this really had to go.