Cleaning Out The Freezer

Since the first of the year, I have been trying to eat our way through all the random stuff I have frozen.  I want to be able to start fresh when it is time for summer berries and cookouts.  I have been surprised at two things:  how much I have kept and how poorly it was packaged and marked.  Sometimes I have had to defrost the item to find out if it is spagetti sauce, chili or some other tomato based item. Still, you can put about anything in a soup and make it taste good, even if it is has a little freezer burn.

I have taken to planning the week's meals on a chalkboard near my kitchen.  First I look through the fridge and freezer to see what needs to be eaten.  If a meal suggested itself (like if I have ground beef, sour cream and salsa, I might plan to make tacos), I write it down. If there are leftovers or items that don't lend themselves to obvious meals, I just write those items.  For example, I have a lot of frozen pumpkin that I saved out around Thanksgiving.  So I plan to make some pumpkin muffins for my boys soon.

I try to go to the store only once a week, after I do my fridge clean out. Sometimes I need an item or two for a planned meal. I get organic produce delivered every other week. It is $33.00 for a large box of seasonal fruits and veggies.  This week I got a leek, rainbow chard, an orange cauliflower, lettuce, garlic, onions, mushrooms, apples, pears . . . It is like a present every time.  However, it is hard to eat my way through all of it in two weeks, sometimes.  This has encouraged me to plan my meals from the veggie out. 

Here is an example: I had a bunch of ruby chard that needed to be eaten. I often make a sausage and potato soup (like the Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana) with chard but I didn't have sausage or potatoes and we had been eating a lot of soup lately. So I decided to saute the chard in a bit of oil and garlic.  This left me the middle ribs to use up.  I cut them up like celery and used them in much the same way in a mushroom stroganoff over rice.  The kids turned their noses up at the "yucky green stuff" but didn't even notice the reddish bits in their stroganoff.

I am planning on using my freezer more wisely this year. I'm going to keep track of what I freeze better and utilize it more in my weekly menu planning. I also think that I need to invest in a food saver as ziplocks and tupperware don't seem to be cutting it. I don't want my freezer to be like a black hole where food goes in, only to be thrown out in months to come.  I keep a pretty well stocked pantry of canned and dried goods, like pasta, beans, canned tomatoes.  This is where I can go if I am out of food. I will use my freezer as an extension of my fridge, for food to be eaten within weeks, not months.

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