A final kitchen freezer update | almost 100%!
Alrighty! I'm back with a freezer update.
As a reminder, here's what I had to use up the last time I updated.
Annnnnd here's how it went!
OJ Concentrate/Peaches
I used some of the OJ concentrate by mixing it with a can of seltzer water.
I also used some in a smoothie, along with the bag of peaches.
Tortillas
I used two tortillas when I made breakfast tacos for myself (which also used up the last of a jalapeno, and a wrinkly red pepper).
More tortilla use in a sec!
Corn
I browned the corn in a skillet.
And then I used it to make a filling for a quesadilla.
I used some of the leftover quesadilla filling to make more breakfast tacos another day, on corn tortillas.
Ground Beef
I thawed the ground beef and browned it with an onion and some homemade taco seasoning that was in my spice cabinet. I didn't have lettuce on hand, but I did have a partial head of cabbage, so I sliced that thinly and used it on the tacos, along with some Mexican crema.
And of course, I used some more of my corn tortillas.
Speaking of the tortillas, they were all frozen into a solid pile, which made using them annoying; you couldn't grab just one or two!
To fix this, I pried them all apart with a butter knife and then froze them in a zipper bag.
Since they're all free-floating now, it's way, way easier to grab one or two.
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In conclusion, I just have a bit of OJ concentrate left, along with some of the tortillas.
But now that the tortillas are separated, I think I can use them up pretty quickly by faithfully making breakfast tacos.
And I will just keep using the OJ concentrate to add to smoothies or my seltzer water, so I know I will use that up too.
Soooo, this was a pretty successful freezer challenge! I feel really happy that my freezer is so much emptier now. Yay me!
About the chest freezer...
I got a small chest freezer for my rental house almost a year ago, and after a year, it needs a little organizing/eating down.
And I might as well tackle that before school starts, right??
I like to keep my freezer challenges manageable, so I'm not going to try to do it all in a week. Instead, I pulled out a few items to show you today, and then I'll give myself a new set of items next week.
Bit by bit, it'll get done!
First up, three chicken carcasses, which I need to turn into broth. It's not a good time of year for doing this on the stovetop, so I think I will set up my crockpot in the carport and do it there.
Then we have two random containers of chicken tenderloins.
This is a bag of frozen peaches that I had grabbed from the freezer at my other house (they're in a reused Costco frozen strawberry bag). I'll probably make smoothies with these.
And lastly, a full package of mozzarella and a tiny bit in another bag. I don't know if I'm too pressed about using up the full bag, but I do want to use the little tiny bit.
That seems like a manageable amount of stuff to use in a week, right? Wish me luck!
I find these posts so inspirational, Kristen! Thank you for giving me the nudge I need to tackle my freezer 🙂
Woohoo! What's better than me eating up food from my freezer? Lots of people eating up food from their freezers. 🙂
LUCK! These are really helpful, Kristen. I never thought about adding frozen orange juice concentrate to seltzer water so can't wait to try it!
I had a freezer clean-out this week, as we had to replace the small upright we'd had for over 25 years. I found a few containers of leftovers that I had forgotten about, so those will be getting used up in the coming week. Also some veggies that look rather icy, but they'll be fine in a soup or stew. Kristen, thanks for the idea of browning the corn. I'm going to try that!
Awesome! We do the same thing (cooking outside during the heat). We keep a small table on the front porch and bring out single burner induction cooker outside when its hot or even in the cold when we're cooking something smelly, like salmon. 🙂
I find tortillas stick together whether I put them in the freezer or just the refrigerator. So I've started separating them with a sheet of wax paper in between each and putting them back in the bag they came in (so I know what they are). Works like a charm, and you can use and reuse the wax paper sheets over and over. And it's easier to see how many you have.
You've completely inspired me to tackle my freezer. Its a jungle in there. So this week we're taking out the frozen meatballs (to make crockpot stroganoff) using up all the remaining partial bags of frozen veg to be a vegetable soup, to eat with grilled cheese sandwiches using a loaf of frozen bread and frozen cheese. I have a huge amount of frozen fruit for when my kids USED to like smoothies, but have decided they don't now. Any suggestions for using it up?
Do you guys like baked fruit dishes, like a crumble? Frozen fruit works great in those. I've used frozen fruit in this dish too: https://www.thefrugalgirl.com/five-step-fruity-overnight-baked-oatmeal/
@Beth H., I use frozen fruit in my baked french toast (along with frozen bread!), it works out well.
@Beth H., fillings for crepes or a fruit sauce on top of waffles or pancakes. You just have to mix in a bit of sugar and cornstarch and you get a nice fruit sauce. Our favorites to use are peaches and strawberries and blueberries. Or we put it on unsweetened yogurt.
@Beth H., I have also found a no added sugar gluten free baked oatmeal that I have been using to use up some of the oats! Kristen’s sounds tastier, but I am trying to deal with some health things right now, so cannot go that route…
Back when I could eat a lot of corn, my favorite way to eat it was how my mother often cooked (usually) fresh or frozen corn kernels: She fried a little bacon, set it aside and crumbled it, drained off all but a tablespoon or so of grease, and dumped the corn in the skillet, stirring until the corn was just cooked. She took it off the heat and added fresh chopped green bell peppers and tomatoes, a little salt, a little pepper and the crumbled bacon and served it warm. We just called it fried corn, but it spelled summer to me for many years.
Anyway... the meals look good! I did a freezer clean out when I got my new freezer, and I don't need another one yet, but it's coming. Good job on using the random stuff.
I always put waxed paper between my tortillas when I freeze them or I get Lump o' Tortilla, which is a real aggravation.
@JD, we Southerners and expat Southerners know that almost anything is improved by using bacon grease. 😉
I'm a lifelong mid-Atlantic-er but I concur!
@JD, My father-in-law would buy bacon ends, fry some up, and use the fat for making popcorn, with the bits of bacon added back in. Back when people made popcorn in kettles and more unusual ends of meat were available in the grocery store.
@A. Marie, It is something I have learned as a FG reader!
@A. Marie,
So true! When we ate corn-on-the-cob from the garden, my dad never used butter - he used a drizzle of hot bacon grease.
@Heidi Louise,
That sounds good!
@A. Marie, Not remotely connected to Southern culinary practices, but in our neighborhood of Eastern European displaced persons there was a coffee can of bacon grease left sitting on a shelf just above the stove. As far as I know, these cans never saw the inside of a fridge and moms and grandmoms just dipped into it as needed. I have a jar of bacon grease but it lives in the fridge; I cannot imagine how much dust we ate in those foods made with stove top bacon grease cans. For some reason Grandma's chicken grease, aka schmaltz, was saved and kept in the fridge. I save that, too, for very specific recipes.
I don't know why I think this, but somehow it seems to me that bacon grease is more shelf-stable than chicken fat. I have no reason for this...just a hunch! I will willingly leave bacon grease out on the counter for a while but I would refrigerate chicken fat promptly. I should google this and see if my gut is correct!
@JD, A friend once firmly demonstrated how corn on the cob is boiled in Virginia (he claimed) by putting the butter in the water and letting it cook along with the corn. I wonder if bacon grease would add an interesting flavor that way.
@Heidi Louise, I used bacon grease to pop my popcorn lunch today in a top- of-the-stove pot!
@JD, That corn sounds delicious!
@Molly F.C., Tasty! And popcorn as a meal can be very filling.
Nice!
Reading this post is like a conversation with my sister...what should I do with half a cup of this and a cup of this there's this and and and...
It's nice to know that other people put leftovers like these together instead of just tossing them!
Oh, for sure! I'm always trying to use up odds and ends. 🙂
I am living vicariously through your freezer clean out. I love to see freezer progress! We had two types of freezer leftovers this week, clearing out a bit of space (meatloaf & prepped taco meat). DS16 also made a fruit smoothie, using up a tiny amount of our frozen fruit.
All these "freezer clean out" posts are giving me flashbacks to childhood. Every few weeks my mother would serve up a platter of individual foil wrapped packages from the freezer and refrigerator. You had to pick one (no fair peeking inside!) hoping you'd get something good, but whatever you got you had to eat. One of my nieces called this "tin foil roulette".
@JDinNM, i love that term!
@JDinNM, what fun for your mom! As a mom I appreciate this. As a kid I would not have been a huge fan. Ha.
@Faith, And I didn't even tell you about the "hot dog stew"!
That's great progress! I know I need to consider doing the same in a more focused way with our chest freezer over here. All kinds of stuff in there! So far we have only slowly been working through it . . .
It helps so much to have accountability; what would I do without being able to report to you guys??
Congratulations on the freezer cleanout, Kristen! As always, you are an inspiration to the rest of us.
The two main categories of things I still have too many of are (1) bones and shrimp shells I'm saving for stock, and (2) containers of stocks I've already made. Clearly, I have not yet adjusted my soup-related freezer habits to my single status. But since I refuse to toss the containers in (2) because of the time/effort investment in these, I may have to harden my heart and toss some of the bags of (1) before I get arrested for practicing voodoo without a license.
I think you need to embrace the idea of soup for breakfast. Heh.
@A. Marie, You might look into pressure canning your stocks, and even soups once made. I can chili, ham and bean soup and split pea soup. If you are used to cooking large batches you still can, but then you split them into pint jars that are shelf stable for a year (or more) and easy for quick one person meals. Just note that pressure canning is different than water bath canning and requires different equipment.
I always thought I needed a freezer, everybody has one. I never got around to buying one. I’m glad. I would have it stuffed full of things I wanted to forget but one day would have to deal with. The peaches look so sad.
@Tiana, a freezer is a good way to protect your food investment! Never store things in it you wouldn't eat, because that wouldn't be frugal at all. And as long as you check it often, the food you do store there will get used. And frozen peaches added to a smoothie could never be sad...
But my orange/peach smoothie looks delicious, does it not? 😉
I really want to say yes…
Haha, well, I can at least tell you that it TASTED delicious. 🙂 It was 0% sad.
@Tiana, peaches always look sad in the freezer. But fresh peaches that I freeze taste amazingly better than store bought frozen ones. Blueberries and strawberries are pretty close. So I don’t waste time with those. But peaches, I’ll freeze sad looking peaches all day for crepe filling in the winter. So good!
@Tiana, not everyone needs a freezer. I do because decent grocery stores are almost 40 miles away. People with giant gardens or large families often need freezers. I also use mine to save things that are almost over the edge, including milk, bread, anything that might otherwise be wasted. But if that's not how you operate, then think of how much money you have saved by not buying a freezer!!
I never thought to brown (frozen) corn!! Life changing idea. Thanks!! I am trying to clear out my freezer, too.Thanks for the inspiration.
@Jen in Santa Cruz, you can brown canned corn too, just pat it dry first! Such a delicious game changer.
Cook's Illustrated taught me...BROWN EVERYTHING. 🙂
My freezer has two packages of all the skin and bones from turning Costco rotisserie chickens into soup. Because it is hot and I didn't want them stinking up the garbage can until garbage day, I froze them. Now that I am mostly at the cabin, I am either not home on garbage day or I forget to put them out. TOMORROW, YES, I WILL REMEMBER! (Such an odd freezer clean-out problem.)
Ooof, yes, that's like putting shrimp shells in the trash can for a week before garbage pickup. So gross! I'd freeze those too.
@Kristen, one year I actually froze gophers so I could dole them out to my very old cat. I would toss one on the porch on a summer day, like popsicles for him, and when he ate one, he had renewed energy for awhile. (Do you want to disinfect my freezer now??) 😎
With freezer items, I'm always a bit afraid to use those that have been in the freezer for longer than I can remember. Any guidance on this and how to use up items that are still safe to eat, but where flavor or texture has diminished? I know meats have a fairly short time in the freezer. Are there other items one should avoid?
If I think something is suspiciously old, then I'm more prone to use it in an application where its flavor will be well-disguised. Something with lots of sauce or spices. Like...chili!
Or take my tortillas as a for-instance. Their texture is a little dry at this point, but if I slice and fry them as a salad topping, that's fine. Or if I heat them in a skillet right before I use them to make breakfast tacos, then they're workably moist.
@Kristina M., be sure to date items as you freeze them and here is handy guide https://www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/cold-food-storage-charts
@S, Thank you! Have to check the date of my ground beef.
@Kristen, thanks, makes sense!
@Kristina M., I live on the edge when things are frozen. It seems that they just get unsavory, such as dried out or the texture changes, not that they become dangerous. So, like Kristen, I just figure out ways to disguise them.
I still have some food waste things I could work on, but because of this blog I no longer throw away bread. I freeze it and save it for a breakfast bake. Sometimes I use frozen fruit in it too. I'm actually eating one right now that has at least 4 types of bread (including waffles and hot dog buns), and some sour cream from the fridge that was getting a little old. I always feel so accomplished when I make one!
Ohh, I know that feeling!
I really enjoy these challenges! Our household, unfortunately, had a less fun clean out recently when something got caught in our upright freezer door while it was closing, but we didn't notice until the next morning and we lost a lot of our groceries and all of the meal-prepped dishes we had made for the week. On the plus side, the motor didn't burn out, the freezer was spotless after we were done cleaning up, and we just ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until it was time to go grocery shopping again. We're looking into maybe getting a wireless freezer alarm that will ping our phones if the temp gets above freezing in case it happens again (though we are also double-checking the door now, lol).
@Kristen - If you like sweet-savory meals, you might consider using the chicken and peaches for something like this: https://realfoodwholelife.com/recipes/slow-cooker-peach-chicken/
Ohhhh, man, that must have been so so frustrating!
I think a freezer alarm is such a good investment for an upright freezer. I approve. 😉
@LeslieM, We have one of those freezer alarms and it has saved our bacon (ha!) twice. Our freezer has the power switch right at the bottom and both times we inadvertently hit the switch with a foot and turned off the freezer. Had it not been for the alarm, we would have lost hundreds of dollars in food. The alarm is not as loud as I would like; since our freezer is on the back porch we could miss it if we did not go out on the porch a lot because of our dog.
I appreciate your freezer clean out posts, they’ve been very inspiring!
We recently went on vacation and I froze a bunch of random items, like onions I diced, a quart of milk, a handful of cherry tomatoes, 1/2 C of marinara sauce. I have a wipe board that helps me keep track of items on hand and I have been using them bit by bit since we’ve been home.
@S, I wonder if a dry erase marker would work on the front of an upright, or on the lid of a chest freezer. . .?
@Central Calif. Artist, I’m not sure. We use a thin/flexible magnetic wipe board, about $10 on Amazon. You got me thinking about using chalkboard paint and chalk.
wahoo! Good feeling to complete things & now you can re-stock your freezer:)
I've been adding in pasta jars to mine. Too often I'd forget to use leftover sauce in time & now it makes me smile to see 2 jars in there for whenever. It also makes me smile to see fourth of July glowsticks from my kids in there:)
An easy way to go trough the tortillas: migas.
I am Mexican an migas are really easy to make, and you Can add a lot of different toppings.
Good luck !!
@Diana De León, yes! Great idea!
I cleaned out my freezer the other day by giving most of it to the neighbors.(I live in a senior apartment complex. Kind of like dorm living)
I had made a bunch of impulsive purchases and had a lot of things that I would never eat.
I restocked and now I have an organized freezer full of food that I will actually use!
Mmm, breakfast tacos. I miss tacos being keto and all.
I make stock in the Crock Pot on low for 72 hours and am rewarded with the most glorious deep, rich chicken stock.
The first time I froze stock I did not know that space had to be left at the top of the mason jars and all 6 of my large mason jars broke in the freezer. Such a disappointment.
@Tammy, I have carefully peeled off the broken glass, rinsed the giant lump of ice, and put it in a ziplock bag for later use. Living on the edge. . .
I appreciate these posts. We will be moving in a month or 2 so I'm focused on eating down the pantry and freezer.
Thanks, Kristen! You have inspired me to tackle our freezer and chest freezer, bit by bit… I have a ridiculous quantity of frozen fruit and have been using some in smoothies and some in unsweetened baked oatmeal, which has been good to alternate with smoothies…