Freezing 101

Every go grocery shopping and end up having to throw away old groceries to make the new one fit in your pantry or throw away whole containers of leftovers? I used to do that all the time, I just threw away food like it was nothing. When we moved to North Dakota and I knew that I would be staying home I decided to be smarter about waiting food and more frugal! 

I knew the first thing that had to stop was the eating out daily for lunch. That was easy for me as I have no vehicle to drive through  the nearest fast food place and no night class to come home from at 9pm when Taco Bell tastes the best. As for my husband, he comes home almost every day for lunch and I wake up in the mornings and cook breakfast. The days he does eat out for lunch are usually a work write off, of which I am fine. I know there were days  back in Louisiana when we both would eat out breakfast and lunch in one days. After finally making a spread sheet I was disgusted by the amount of money we spent eating out. 

These days, we have two "left over" days a week and a morning when I don't wake up to cook breakfast. The good thing about moving here is that even if my husband did want to go to McDonald's for breakfast he would have to wait 30 mins in the drive through. Williston has had such a tremendous population boom that dinning in is faster than driving through. Anyway, I digress. Left overs were working great and since my 21 month old son eats anything he can consume the third day of leftovers we are now tired of, all is well. I have also decided to start freezing. Most recipes I make will produce a day or two of leftovers and when you cook 2-3 times a day that is a lot of leftovers. Now I take half of what I make and prepare it to freeze. If it's a Crockpot dish that just means dumping half the recipe into a Ziploc bag. If it involves ground meat I have to cook the meat first and if it is a casserole I do everything but bake it. 

I have been doing a lot of reading on freezing; how to freeze and what you can freeze. I have come to learn that flash freezing makes freezing easy. Whether it is slices bananas I am freezing for my smoothies, cookie dough for another day, or extra buttermilk; flash freezing is the way to go. Flash freezing is super easy! Line a baking tray with wax paper or aluminum foil and freeze the item for about two hours and then add all of them to one bag! You can even do this for frying, just dredge and bread the meat like you would fry it but instead of putting it in the pan, flash freeze it! 

BAAAAM

We went to the bread store and I bought all this for $10! Soft shell tortilla's frozen in packs of four, that is the amount my family eats. French bread frozen in fives for french toast, and dinner rolls frozen in fours for a quick bun to put leftovers on! 

Three or four times a month I will need heavy whipping cream but I never use the whole thing. So thanks to Pinterest I have frozen them in ice trays which hold 2 teaspoons each. I have already used them and they thaw beautifully!

I use buttermilk a lot for frying and baking but can never manage to use a whole container. So I poured it into regular sized cupcakes pans, which measured out to be 1/2 cup each and flash froze them before adding them to this bag.

Another Pinterest find. Flash freeze cut up lemons in vinegar and throw them in my garbage disposal! The vinegar will have you freezer smelling while you flash freeze but these are worth the smell.

My Birthday batch of cookies! White Chocolate chips and butterscotch chips! This recipe made three dozen and needed to be frozen. My good friend Marie has a blog and does a lot of blogging on food so I asked her how to freeze these. I made them on Thursday, kept them in the fridge for 4-5 days and baked a few here and there until finally flash freezing them. 

Here is what they look like in the bag ready for the deep freeze!

A week or so ago the cleaning lady for my husband's work brought him tomatoes and bell pepper from her garden! I bought a bag of onions, carrots, and celery and put that in the crock pot all day. I then added tomato paste and blended it; you have to let it cool before you blend it or the steam will cause the cover to pop off resulting in sauce covered cabinets. That preparation gave me three gallon bags of sauce. I wish I would have taken a picture of that process!

There you have it! My introduction into freezing and flash freezing foods! I am super excited to finally blog about my time spent in the kitchen.