I had a turkey from 2004. And 2006.
Yup.
If you follow me on Instagram (which you totally should! We have a lot of fun over there.), you already know that this week, I defrosted my chest freezer.
(Remember when I bought this freezer? And remember how dreadful my old one was? I completely forgot about the leaking rusty water until this morning.)
I don't think that I've ever actually defrosted it in the 6 years we've owned it.
I'd feel bad about that, but the frost buildup actually wasn't super-duper out of control. I must have a good freezer!
Anyhoo, I took EVERYTHING out, poured hot water down the sides, got rid of all the ice, dried it out, and put things back.
During the defrosting process, I uncovered three (3!) turkeys.
I remember getting them free at my grocery store for several years (holiday promotions, I think!) but since we have family in the area, I never cooked them at the holidays, and they just kind of sat in my freezer untouched.
The turkeys were from 2004-2006.
(!)
Yup.
So, they predate my blog (and my food waste obsession) by several years.
At this point, I didn't want to thaw and cook them.
I mean, I'm sure they're safe to eat but I feel like the juiciness levels might be a tad compromised by this point, so
I could see myself cooking them and then trying to figure out what to do with a ton of not-delicious turkey.
Sooo, I listed 'em on freecycle, and sure enough, someone came to pick them up within 30 minutes.
Perhaps they'll make pet food? Or broth?
I dunno.
But I do know that I love freecycle. I'm so happy to be rid of the turkeys!
While most of the stuff in my chest freezer was a-ok, there were a few things I couldn't save.
Some of those veggies had just been frozen for WAY too long, and I remember that sausage being not-delicious when I bought it in a bulk pack several years ago.
(At which point I sensibly froze the rest of it, because of course sausage becomes much more delicious after sitting in a freezer for 3 years. #protip)
The ricotta cheese container? Let me zoom in on that for ya.
Yup. It says 2009. Which means it's been in the freezer almost as long as I've owned the freezer.
Whoops.
Most of my freezer waste was able to be composted, so there's that. And now my chest freezer is delightfully organized, plus I know exactly what's in it.
On to my fridge....
I did my usual freeze-all-the-extra-fruit-thats-about-to-go-bad thang....
And I found some elderly chicken hiding in the back of the fridge.
So, this was a little bit of a sad week, because I threw away two meat products.
But on the upside (because you know there is always an upside!), I did freecycle three huge birds.
And considering how long it had been since I thoroughly cleaned out my chest freezer, I feel pretty happy that my waste wasn't more!
I did discover that I have a small excess of cranberries...
But not as many as that time I blogged about the scarcity principle and cranberries.
I have three whole bags and two partial bags, which isn't that bad. I can totally use that up by making some cranberry bread and cranberry sauce.
And maybe a pan of pineapple cranberry bars are in order as well.
______________________________
So. What's up in food waste news for you? Any 11 year old turkeys surfacing at your house?? 😉
I grew up with a chest freezer, and when we got married and didn't have room for one I thought we wouldn't be able to live without it. Luckily we haven't had much need to buy in great bulk, my brown thumb keeps me from having a garden's worth of veggies to freeze, and we tend to eat things up quickly. Nice job not letting the turkeys go to waste! But stories like that make me glad I don't have another appliance to clean and pay to run!
Since we're on baby watch we're really not doing much in the way of grocery shopping or actual cooking. Last weekend I made a ham and we've been eating the leftovers all week.
Oh and I'm sure those turkeys were fine so long as they remained frozen the whole time. I do sympathy. I have a couple whole chickens, at least one turkey and a pork shoulder. All take a good deal of time to cook so I reserve these for Sunday dinners, usually.
So glad Freecyxle saved the day- great idea to post them there!
Here's an idea for your difficult to view all contents freezer. Attach a large piece of paper to the outside lid. Perhaps make categories across the top like meat, veggies, sauces/fruits. As you put stuff in, add to the list. When you remove it, cross it off.
I've thought of that, but have been hesitant to try because I feel about 99% certain that I'd fall off the wagon as far as updating it goes. I'm terrible with stuff like that.
I guess I could try to improve, though. 😉
Thank you for the smiles and my story of the day is that the pantry was attacked today. For once we could be ruthless and we found stuff dating back to 2012. There were ancient dried and glace fruits that mum did not want to see in the bin.
I must confess I had a terrible time when I had a chest freezer. I am short and when I had a c-section for a premmie baby they advised me to freeze my milk. I found one bottle a few years later. It was interesting as it defrosted as it was almost all fat, or at least it seemed that way.
I love that you have been so honest. Turkeys are never free around here. However, I have been known to find one I hadn't cooked because it was too darn hot. I live in subtropical Australia. A cool Christmas is very rare.
Ah yes....a roasted turkey probably sounds better in July to you!
11 years old turkey????? I hate wasting food, but, no, this is too old.
I also gave a lot of food on Freecycle when we went wheat-free (breads, pastas...), it was gone in a matter of hours.
Food waste this week.... hmm... none, so far. But we have a lot of produce in the fridge right now, so I'm thinking "vegetable soup" this week-end.
I am now teaching my 5 year old to not waste food. She tells me yesterday that she ate half her banana at school and that the teacher had her throw out the other half. Why?? It's kept in the fridge all day. So wasteful. So I explained to her that she can just use an empty container in her bag to store the excess in, and bring it back home to be used in daddy's smoothie. Will see how that goes...
Exactly my thought. I don't want to eat a turkey that's older than Sonia. 😉
Whoa an 11 year old frozen turkey. That's older than my first child 🙂
No waste for me this week. The lack of material for my Food Waste Friday post means as well as the obligatory fridge photo I'm running a giveaway!
You have just made me feel better about myself. Not because I've never found a 9 year old turkey in my freezer....because I have. Only I cooked it ;).
and it was NOT delicious
Bahahahaha! Well, I'm feeling better about my choice to freecycle the turkeys, then.
I probably would have cooked it for stock, then - assuming the meat was not tasty - given the meat to a neighbor's dog. But I'm strange that way.
It was a little funny to read your post about the then-new freezer and how the wonderful sections would keep you from losing food in there. As we say, just keepin' it real!
Um, yeah.
But hope springs ever new in my heart. I always think, ok, NOW I will not lose food any more.
And I do lose LESS than I used to. But it's, um, obviously still not a perfected art form.
An improvement is an improvement - it doesn't have to be perfect to be better than before. (I strongly suspect I'm preaching to the choir here.)
Haha. I feel like I MIGHT have said something like that before.
Cranberries are great in smoothies too! Orange, banana, cranberry is a good combo. 🙂
I never would have thought to put turkeys on Freecycle. I'm hoping that whoever is using them is using them for pets!
Today was a ridonkulous freezer day for me. I discovered the freezer on our refrigerator unit had been left a crack open all night. Sooooo....lots of frozen veggies in the compost. On the plus side I got rid of a lot of stuff that had been in there way too long (like sesame seeds from 2005 or something like that. I didn't even taste them but I can't imagine that they taste wonderful). I'm thankful that the only meat I had in there was a pound of taco meat that was still very cold (though defrosting) and a pound of uncooked ground beef that was back all the way and didn't feel defrosted at all. I still pulled both out and will use them up in the next two days.
Ohhh, that is such a frustrating experience.
But yay for a freshly organized and cleaned freezer. Isn't that a lovely feeling??
We quit using our freezer after losing everything in it and the refrigerator after the derecho three years ago (no electricity for six days and our neighbors were out for four days). It was not the first time we lost everything due to an outage. We managed to live without the freezer so eventually gave it away.
You can use cranberries in smoothies. Throw a few in and see what you think.
I love freecycle for getting rid of food as well as just about everything else.
I did try that once, but oof, the sourness was too much for me! I'm so impressed at the people who manage to drink them in smoothies.
We have a small generator that is enough to power our fridge and freezer, which is a HUGE weight off of my mind when storms come through.
I laughed all the way through this post! BHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!
I love you, Stacy! lol And I'm glad I made you laugh.
Um, I hope you told the freecycler that they were from 2004, right?
We froze a piece of our wedding cake to eat on our first year anniversary and I remember it being gross after 1 year. So yeah, 11...
Oh my goodness, yes, I did! Full disclosure. And there were still multiple people who wanted them.
The turkeys were in a non-defrosting chest freezer, so they were probably in much better shape than your wedding cake. Food stored in those self-defrosting freezers goes bad so fast.
O my, too too funny and real -- LOVE putting the turkeys on Freecycle -- genius! Laughing very hard: "Because of course sausage becomes much more delicious after being in the freezer for 3 years. #pro tip."
Gosh, my tiny little refrigerator freezer is housing similar things and I don't even have the excuse of a giant chest unit with abyssal (abysmal??) depths. There's a frozen pumpkin pie that I bought very cheaply with coupons that dates from the Dubya years, "Vintage Mrs. Smiths's" is how we'll phrase it on Free cycle. Every few months we debate cooking it but then we stop and think about it, exchange dark looks, then quickly shove it back in and slam the door.
Thank you for cracking me up today! 🙂
Right?? Because the pie will magically become tasty as it sits in the dark, icy recesses of your freezer.
Obviously.
We are SUCH irrational creatures.
This just made me feel so much better about my cooking life. I mean, I hate that I'm a perfectionist (I have such unrealistic ideas about what I can and will do and how much time I have and energy I will realisitically spend--and I don't even have kids--but I think I should be a 50's homemaker!) and that often just results in me giving up on things instead of making an effort and congratulating myself on my progress.
And I just love this blog--even though I'm a writer/professor and have a very different lifestyle-- and think you are just the bees knees, so seeeing this lovely thing-- 11 year old turkey!! 3 of them!-- makes me feel like I have such a human connection to you. Thank you! You've made me feel like I can always improve and little mistakes don't mean I'm not still a good person!
Aww, thank you for your encouraging words! I'm always so delighted to hear that my blog resonates not just with readers who have similar lifestyles, but also with people whose lives look different than my own.
And yes, we alllll have areas where we make mistakes. Join the party! Shoot for small, steady improvements, and you'll make lots of progress over time.
I literally just cooked a 16 month old turkey today. It was probably the best turkey I've ever made. So yummy. Making 20 cups of broth in the crock pots now. I can't believe anyone wanted an 11 year old turkey. You should have mummified one. @story of the world homeschooler here
Ohhhh, dang. I didn't think of that. And you know what's ridiculous/hilarious? We JUST passed that chapter in SOTW, and I thought, ohh, I don't want to waste a whole chicken on that project.
(insert embarrassed face)
Maybe that's what the other people are using them for!
Although three mummified turkeys could possibly be overkill....
Lol!!! I agree with your assumption of pet food. Nobody needs that many mummified turkeys. Lol. I saw it suggested that you use a Cornish game hen for the mummy. Many moms said they would absolutely do it again, and the total cost was $6.
The cornish game hen is a GREAT idea. And then you wouldn't have a large chicken taking up space in your house for weeks.
Wow, 11 years! I have found some old spices in the pantry but never that old. Unfortunately we don't have an active Freecycle group where I live, but we do have some excellent local Facebook groups, including Social Pantry (https://www.facebook.com/events/1693260810905656/) where people with excess food list it and where people in need of food post requests.
My food waste this week consisted of a large bowl of popcorn leftover from a birthday party and three oranges.
On the blog this week I talking about the #UseYourLoaf campaign, my zero bread waste routine and a yummy new recipe I have discovered for using up breadcrumbs: http://moretimethanmoney.co.nz/2015/09/25/useyourloaf-reducing-the-amount-of-bread-that-goes-to-waste/
Oh, I love that idea! What a great use of a Facebook group.
WOW! I have only ben following your blog a few months but I am actually shocked about the freezer finds.. and also find it rather humerous! Love that you Freecycled.. I have done that in the past when I found myself with items that just were not gonna get eaten.
The positive for you is that no kids have left your freezer open all night...
Heh, well, if you hang around here for long, you will definitely figure out that I do NOT have it all together. And I don't have it all figured out. I'm just bumbling along and like everyone else, I'm a mix of triumphs and failures.
And yes, thus far, no one has accidentally left the freezer open. I think this is an upside of a chest freezer...it's pretty hard to forget to shut the lid, you know? It's way easier to leave an upright freezer's door cracked open a bit.
This is why I don't have a chest freezer. I have a hard enough time with the regular freezer. It getting full is sometimes the only reason I defrost stuff.
You have NO idea how much better you've just made me feel about my own chest freezer. I inventoried mine a few months ago and have been working on eating through everything - or at least enough so I can defrost it. My most exciting find was 14 pounds of cheese (hey - it was on sale) and one ancient jar of some sort of Asian black bean sauce that I didn't like - so naturally I froze it rather than tossing it - because, you know, prolonging the guilt makes it so much better, doesn't it? (she says with heavy sarcasm.)
But I have a serious question for you - those little divider things look really cool, and it seems like it would make it easier for things to not get lost into the void. Did they come with your freezer or can you buy them separately?
Yeah, they just came with my freezer! I love them, though.
OK and one more thought I just have to share. Don't know if anybody out there ever got into the TV show Northern Exposure, but it's set in Alaska, and there's an episode where Dr. Fleischman stumbles upon a woolly mammoth that's somehow miraculously been preserved fully intact in the permafrost. But by the time he gets back to the scene with someone from the local university, Walt, the backwoods trapper, has found the thing and is busy grilling it up for a BBQ.
Anyhow, this post totally reminded me of that! 🙂
I have to tell you that I laughed so hard (in sympathy, of course) when I read this post. Naturally, sausage that is distasteful when it's hot and fresh is going to improve with three years' freezer burn - of course. I presently have sausage in my freezer in the same state of icy banishment. Time to pitch it.
Oh, I wouldn't even have minded if you laughed AT me. I was laughing at my own ridiculousness. 😉
Oh, I'm so glad you shared cleaning out your freezer - just yesterday, I was thinking of cleaning out mine (and my refrigerators (yes, plural) and pantry...) since who knows how long certain things have been in there, and buying bins to better organize since I've been seeing many videos of bloggers who are doing just that with bins/containers of all sizes. At first, I thought taking up 'space' in fridge or freezer with plastic containers was hogging a lot of premium real estate, but when I can't find something and it becomes cluttered in there, I think I'm at the point of giving it a try. Have you used containers for that (or in the pantry)?
I do have containers for my spices, which is a total lifesaver. https://www.thefrugalgirl.com/2012/01/kitchen-cabinet-before-and-afters-plus-you-can-link-up-yours/ And I use some plastic containers on my laundry room shelf, which is really the only place in my house that is kind of like a pantry.
Keeping things organized so you can see them is half the battle against food waste, I think!