Freezer Challenge, week 5!
Last week's freezer food
Here's what I started with last week:
Here's what I did with this batch of food:
We ate the applesauce with dinner one night.
I've been using up the whole wheat bread by making avocado toast. The whole loaf isn't gone, but it will be eventually!
You guys had lots of great walnut suggestions on last week's post, so thank you.
(If you need walnut ideas, peruse the comments on that post!)
I've been sprinkling walnuts on my yogurt, and I also made two batches of these date/walnut balls which you guys suggested.
I had some dates that were getting pretty dry, so this was a double win, using up walnuts AND dates.
I soaked my dry dates for the first batch, but not quite long enough, which made them hard to blend up.
So for the second batch, I soaked the dates overnight and that went much better.
I'm probably through about half the bag, which is awesome! And since several of us like the date/walnut balls, I'll keep on making batches to use up the rest of the bag.
I also made a batch of kale/walnut/basil pesto. That only calls for ¼ cup of walnuts, though, so honestly it was a lot more helpful for using up my kale than for using the walnuts.
I had a lot of kale in my fridge (thanks, Hungry Harvest!), so this was actually a happy thing.
Speaking of kale....
I used all the pineapple and about half the frozen kale in smoothies this week.
I thawed the pork butt and made a big batch of pulled pork. We ate half for dinner and I froze the other half for future meals.
Which kinda sorta defeats the freezer challenge part of things, because that pork is technically still in the freezer!
But hey, it's in a quickly edible form now, and I'll just have my kids pull it out one night when they need a quick meal.
Lastly, I cut up the sub rolls (and a dry bun) and made a pan of overnight French toast, which used up the whole package very nicely.
There's nothing redeeming, healthwise, about overnight French toast, but hey, at least I didn't waste the sub rolls.
So, here's how things stand now:
I didn't touch the sausage, but that's ok. I know I'll use that eventually. And I'm confident that I'll get through the rest of the kale, walnuts, and whole wheat bread.
This week's food!
Going from left to right...
- several tilapia fillets (hmm. Not enough for a whole dinner.)
- two bananas (muffins!)
- some breakfast sausage (a breakfast side, probably)
- more of those butternut squash cubes (really???)
- another almost full container of powdered coffee creamer (HOW.)
- a gallon bag of frozen tomatoes (I'll probably make tomato sauce)
- a bag of bread cubes (croutons!)
- a bit of mystery browned meat, which I am guessing is Italian sausage.
It would be nice if someone (me) had thought to label that.
I think I might see if someone's church needs coffee creamer because two almost full containers is just a stupid amount to keep around for occasional hot chocolate mix making.
Thanks for following along with my freezer challenge, you guys. You are really helping me get through a lot of food that would have been forgotten otherwise!
You can make butternut squash muffins or bread. There are even chocolate versions similar to your chocolate zucchini bread.
Stretch your fish by making chowder? Maybe hold off until Fall for that!
Will there be enough tilapia if you use the breadcrumbs and do fish cakes?
I tried your fish cake recipe and my husband loved them!
Smoosh that butternut up and make "pumpkin" baked custard topped with chopped candied walnuts.
Butternut pancakes? With chopped walnuts in the syrup?
There was a recipe I had that was for a cake made with pureed pumpkin (or butternut) and it had a lot of nuts mixed in it. It was baked in two coffee tins, back when coffee came in tins. Frosting was cream cheese frosting sprinkled with more nuts. It was called Old Witch's Magic Nut Cake and had a little story to go with it. My kids loved that at Halloween. Huh. I just remembered that, after, um, well, a long time.
It's from a childrens book called "the old witch and the polka dot ribbon". I still have my copy of the book and love the cake!
Hmmm, I also have dates that are not getting any younger. I may have to make those--bonus that they are no-bake so I don't have to heat up the kitchen during our hot summer!
Can you do fish tacos with the tilapia? Maybe on a night when not everyone is eating if it won't quite make enough for the whole crew?
Put some of the butternut squash in smoothies! Look up recipes- I am planning on doing the same!
Wow you are kicking this freezer's butt clean!! Great job combining walnuts and dates together! Healthy and frugal combo, love it!
Walnuts and dates can jump into those banana muffins!
I must say that I am getting quite an education with your Freezer Challenge posts and updates. You freeze things that I never realized could be frozen. Like the whole tomatoes and whole bananas. And coffee creamer. It’s causing me to rethink what can and can’t be frozen.
Tip: if you peel the bananas before freezing they can go directly from the freezer into smoothies.
I normally only use bananas for baking banana bread, so I peel them and mush them up with a little bit of lemon juice. Then I measure it out for my recipe and freeze flat in a ziploc. Then it is all ready to go when I want to make the bread.
I can tell you why I don't freeze them whole. A hundred years ago ;), when my friend was on bedrest, I would buy her groceries and have to put them away and her dumb frozen bananas fell on my bare feet every time. I finally threw them out, I mean, we were saving like a dollar here and she wasn't doing any baking in her condition!
Ohhh, things falling out of the freezer is terrible! We have a freezer below our fridge now, but I used to always have stuff falling onto my feet with our old fridge/freezer.
add walnuts to your banana bread! and, you could even hide the butternut squash cubes in there too!
Well done!
I love reading your freezer challenge. It gives me such great ideas because sometimes I have similar items in mine...especially the HH produce! I freeze my extras at the end of the week before they go bad too.
Sausage filling for tilapia roll ups?
The Pioneer Woman has a recipe for butternut squash mac and cheese and it is amazing! It was the first recipe that I tried using butternut squash and quite honestly I don't feel the need to find any more because I could eat that mac and cheese by the bucketful!
Interesting! I'll have to google that.