taking full advantage of your freezer

[Jared77]

how do you do it? April's post about freezers got me thinking....

For us we make a number of premade meals. Things like mastacholi, chili (both red and white bean) pulled pork, and the mix for stuffed peppers & zucchini to have on hand we'll make a double batch of and freeze the extras. We bag off the extras, date them, lay them flat in the freezer stacked up and let them freeze. Then when we've had one of those days we'll pull them out heat them up and we're eating homemade good meals in minutes.

We also do strawberry short cake topping too when we're picking and making jam. We'll save so many for shortcake and do the same thing. Mash the strawberries, add sugar, mix, portion off, and freeze. That way we have REALLY good strawberries to put with our biscuits.

We also made all our own baby food saving us hundreds of dollars.

Any other ideas?

 

[Smiles Jr.]

Mrs. Smiles and I have been married for 47 years and we got our first freezer about two months ago. I wanted to get one because I was getting ready to butcher a hog and for some reason, to me, our canned pork just does not taste as good as fresh or frozen. It's good but not great. The same with all the fresh fish I catch.

I found a small chest type freezer on Craig's List and bought it. It had to be small due to space availability around here. I think it's 14 cu. ft. We have devised a method of keeping the the frozen goodies somewhat organized. We made cloth bags out of fabric pieces in our sewing supplies. They are color coded and we have several bags of each color. Beef is brown, pork is pink, chicken is white, rabbit is blue, and fish is black. We're going to make another color for misc. items. These bags hold a lot of and are flexible enough to allow all the bags to nestle into the chest. When we need some chicken, for instance, we just pull out one of the white bags and root around in it to get what we need. Works for us.

There may be a much better way to organize a chest freezer and I'll be glad to see other's ideas.

 

[baymule]

I have plastic divided plates with lids that I put leftovers in. Just a helping of this or that-not enough to save in frige for leftovers and hate to toss to dogs or chickens......... but put it in the divided plate and save until it is a complete meal. Since my 90 year old mother came to live with us, lunch was a challenge. it seems that she wants a full meal for lunch (I could care less what I eat at lunch) and I was beginning to feel like a restaurant. These frozen plates of leftovers are great!

When I get in the mood to fire up the bbq pit, I thaw out everything I can think of and cook all day. I bbq chicken, pork, beef, sausage, hamburgers...... and freeze in meal sized portions. Then we have that smokey goodness when ever we want without all the work and mess!

 

[journey11]

I like to vacuum pack my ground beef, ground venison and venison tenderloin cutlets in quart-size bags. Since they lay flat, they thaw in a sink full of cool water in about 20 minutes.

I don't freeze a lot of pre-made meals, although that is a smart idea, especially in those months prior when you have a little one on the way and you know you'll need quick and easy meals for the weeks afterward. Sometimes I do freeze chicken or turkey pot pies (unbaked) when I have roasted a bird and have lots of leftover meat to use. Those stack nicely in the freezer. Oh, and hotdog sauce...I make huge batches of that and freeze it in the wide-mouth pint jars.

We made nearly all of our baby food too. You save so much money and you can make healthy, organic food. I didn't try deep freezing it though. I only make about 2 weeks worth of baby food at a time or take food out of what I've made for the family and puree it for baby before any salt or spice is added. How do you pack it? Does yours keep well in the deep freezer?

 

[Jared77]

For baby food we went to the dollar store and bought cheap ice cube trays. Each cube = 1 oz. So if you want to know how much your child is eating you know by the number of cubes. The Dr asked us so that's what prompted me to figure out what each one was.

We made big batches of baby food. I bought by the bushel and would cook it that way since I could usually get a price break by buying that much. We would chunk up most of the veggies and then steam them. Then the chunks would go into the food processor while still very hot to puree. We'd add water from the steam pot back into the food processor to get the consistency we wanted and not give up any of the nutrients lost in the steaming process. Then we'd spoon out the food into ice cube trays. The soft foods like berries would just go right into the food processor.

Sometimes we'd put a little post it note on the tray with what it was. Peas and beans when pureed can look a lot alike as to a lot of the berry combinations. So once frozen we'd pop them out and fill a gallon sized freezer bag with each individual food and label it accordingly on the outside. Then we just put the bags in the freezer. When it was time for our daughter to eat, we'd go get however many cubes we wanted, thaw the cubes in the microwave, and serve. The rest just sat in a bag. Though this time I think we'll keep the bag inside of a Rubbermaid bin so we can stack them easier and label the bins.

The nice thing was we could make all sorts of flavor combinations just by selecting which cubes we wanted.

Far as traveling we'd just put the cubes into a bag or Tupperware container and grab a cold pack out of the freezer for lunches and put all that into a small insulated lunch bag with a plastic bowl and kid sized spoon. We got really good at figuring out where a microwave was. Many gas stations and convenience stores have them. We'd pull in, nuke the food and we were good to go. We even found a microwave at the food court. Often times if you ask and explain why you need one many people were more than happy to help. It really was easy and we're going to do it again.

Though I'm not looking forward to cutting and cubing up another bushel of butternut squash.

 

[ducks4you]

I use my freezer for the following:
1) stocking up on good meat buys, good pizza buys, and good frozen food buys
2) storing my grape harvest--I have 5 established vines
3) storing leftovers
4) "Freezer Camp" for chickens
For good leftover storage you need your favorite containers and you MUST LABEL!! I use masking tape and a sharpie. I write the name of the food/meal AND the date (mm/dd/yy), 2 digits of each. If you tape before you freeze it sticks, and it's easy to remove later. I also use plastic storage bags, like when I butcher chickens.
When my 3yo freezer died in December I had to re-store my grapes bc I didn't have enough room to move everything from my NEW upright freezer to fit in the OLD upright freezer AND keep the grapes in the old one, too, ~ same size. So, I had to can my grapes.

 

[bj taylor]

i have hopes of becoming more self sufficient. i recently read where someone milked their goats, put the milk in zip locks & put it in the freezer. of course it goes flat when you put it in, so you can stack it neatly. she said the bag invariably leaks when thawing, so put it in a bowl in the fridge when thawing. i thought that sounded wonderful.