The other day, I left my freezer open. Just an inch, but it was for about 3 hours. A new container of ice cream that had been crammed into the freezer on its side melted and dripped all over EVERYthing...it was a serious mess. Today was clean up day.
As I was rinsing everything off, I decided to meal plan off of the food we currently have on hand. Because we have plenty. I have a habit of grabbing random stuff like a package of stir fry beef on manager's special for $1.50 and forgetting about it for a few weeks. All fine and good, but why plan a dry pasta meal when I could use up that "fresh" food and free up some freezer space?
So today I took inventory of everything in my freezers. (we have two...both jam packed) In the meantime, I rinsed off the melted-then-refrozen ice cream drippings off all of the food in the one freezer and wiped down the shelves, putting everything back nice and OCD like neat. I even found a huge bag of dinner rolls and some mini-muffins I'd forgotten about, not to mention a questionable package of salmon from July '08.
My new system will include a running list of my freezer contents that I'll keep on the side of the fridge. I'll cross things off as I use them and add things as I buy them. No more searching fruitlessly for ground turkey or shredded cheese...it's all about the list.
Now I get the task of meal planning for the next 3-4 weeks using up the items we have in the house. I should probably wait to see what comes in the produce co-op this Saturday, since I'll have to use my fresh foods first, but I'm pretty motivated to get this over with. Maybe I'll just write out recipe ideas and finalize it this weekend. I'm hoping to only have to buy milk and eggs to fill in the gaps. (I buy all of my bread and produce from the co-op) I'll let you know how it goes and post my whole meal plan on Sunday, for those who care. :)
Posts
5 comments:
Awesome idea! I have "self diagnosed OCD" myself and it's nice to see that I am not the only one with a neat and tidy freezer!
Is that butter in there? Does butter freeze well? Does is still taste like creamy, buttery deliciousness when it thaws?
I always freeze my butter. It tastes the same too! What I noticed was that Katie has shredded cheese in her freezer, I had no idea cheese could be frozen! Something new I get to try!
Oh ladies, I freeze almost everything, except mashed potatoes. But cheese and butter for sure. I stock up when it's on sale, that way I always have some on hand. (2 things I hate running out of!)
Marbled block cheese kind of crumbles when you go to slice it, but other than that, I've had all good luck. I've never noticed even a LITTLE difference, especially when you let it defrost in the fridge. If you defrost shredded cheese on the counter, sometimes the ice crystals make it a little soggy, but it still tastes fine.
You made me laugh about the "OCD like", I'm glad that I found your blog and sorry to hear about the ice mess. I would really be upset about losing the ice cream. Please tell me it wasn't chocolate. Mmmmmmm, chocolate.
Post a Comment