What foods do you freeze?
 

Lately my time has been somewhat short but there have been periods where I've had some on my hands, so during those times I've taken to cooking up meals to go in the freezer for the 'bad' days.

I've done things like a beef vindaloo, lasagne, an assortment of muffins and cakes, and savoury pies.

What sort of things do you cook and freeze for a rainy day? I'm after ideas because I think Dazza and the kids might get bored if I keep doing the same sorts of things.

Carol Makes up Freezer bags of a real Basic tomato sauce for Chillie or spaghetti.

Eggs and bananas.

Lettuce.


No really, it gives me an excuse to throw it out without eating it.

Most of what I freeze I then don't use. It's basically a staging post on the way to the kitchen bin.

Lol, I bet we both do the same thing:

Examine food in fridge. Decide it is going a bit off and not good enough to eat. Move toward bin, but decide the item isn't bad enough to throw out. Put item back in fridge for a few more days, until it IS ready to throw out.

Or is that just me?

One of our staples is bolognaise sauce, it's just the same defrosted as fresh, just as easy to make a gallon as cup full. the trick is to freeze it in thin sheets so you can just snap off as much as you want.

Hahahah. Not just you. That's precisely what I do.

I try not to freeze stuff, because I'll never eat it.

I freeze the left over carcass from rotisserie chickens. Then, when I have three of them sometime down the road, I throw them into the crockpot to make broth for chicken and noodles.

are we really this bored?

Umm...yes?

Wow thats clever.... I have always portioned into bags, but that seems much less time consuming.


I freeze bread, cheese, lasagne, beans, banannas, the bits of veggies that are more stock material than they are salad material... lots of stuff.. but not milk... that one doesn't freeze very well.

What's boring about it?

I'm after ideas and thought I'd ask here for some. If you don't find it entertaining, you know what you can do right? :)

cookie dough freezes well too. When pilsbury has the coupons in the Sunday paper and Alberstons puts them on sale for 10 for $1 I stock up... I mke birthday cookies and work party cookies for FREE

I freeze fruit to save up for making jam.
Bread - make my own, slice it, then freeze it.
Waffles & pancakes (kids love this!)
Spaghetti sauce



That's about it. Sometimes soup.

Nobody's stopping you from starting your own threads.

I made some more lasagne yesterday, and I'll be making some more cupcakes later in the week to freeze. These are really good to pack in the kids lunchboxes as a treat, and can be packed while still frozen.

I think I might make some beef and vege soup or maybe minestrone. Both of those should freeze well. I've tried pumpkin soup before but wasn't happy with the consitency when I thawed it, so I'll give that a miss I think.

I also freeze bread, although not usually home made. I've found it's really not cost or time effective for me to make bread for every day eating with two almost teenagers in the house. They can go through a loaf in less than a day! Much simpler to get loaves from the bakery.

I've never had a problem freezing processed milk before, but farm fresh doesn't freeze well I've found. The cream content tends to come out lumpy apon thawing, which is odd, because I sometimes freeze whipped cream and it thaws well.

Seriously Jim. Go start one that I'm not interested in, and I'll drop by and make snarky comments about your interests.

C'mon, isn't anyone going to say "dead hookers"?

Dead Hookers!


I actually am that bored. But, that's what's great about cellar threads. If you're bored and avoiding starting work, threads like this are invaluable!

And, it's nice to find out I'm not the only one whose fridge-freezer is basically death row for food.

I'm beginning to wonder why I even bring home the leftovers from restaurants anymore. 90% of the time I just let them die a slow death in the fridge. :yeldead:

I almost always eat restaurant leftovers.

It's homemade leftovers that suffer. Also I have this neurosis about leftovers; if I don't eat something when it's freshly made, it's not food. I can't bring myself to eat it. So if I, for example, make a big pot of soup for housemate and kids right before I go out for the evening, no matter how good it is, even if it's my favorite soup, if I don't have some before I go out I won't ever eat any of it.

Completely ridiculous, and it leads to a lot of food going bad. I know it's related to OCD but I just can't see going on medication for something that trivial.

Leftovers are great. I have to admit that in the past we had food going dodgy in the fridge, but these days it gets eaten by someone almost always.

Foods like lasagne and other pastas taste better reheated anyway I reckon.

I just got a set of freezer pop moulds to freeze smoothies in. (A whole blender-full is a bunch of servings). Haven't tried them yet tho

We freeze anything and everything .....if there's room, which there usually isn't. I get in trouble with beest a lot for buying more stuff that needs freezing that we have foom for. But it's ON SALE! :lol: ....we already have two freezers in the kitchen.

we use the freeze flat system for lots of things, not just the spag sauce.....

we don't freeze the dead hookers, though, they don't store well next to the hobos.

When you talk about a freeze flat system, does that mean you put wet items in freezer bags and then freeze them? I've done this before with single serves of soup. It's a very convenient way to store food.

Today I've made (am in the process of making) minestrone. There'll be enough for dinner tonight, then about 3 to 4 serves left over to go in the freezer.

We have two freezers too, but one is also the storage space for Dazza's bait, so I only put stuff in tupperware in that one otherwise the smell can pervade the food which is not tempting and leads to a lot of waste.

We find the hookers and hobos go quite nicely together on the bottom shelf.

I bought one of those, a good one, and I can't find it anymore. :(

I do the same also. :p

When I was little my Gran and one of the Aunties had ice cube trays in the shape of little pink elephants. I used to love them!

Curried Sausages

Pilaf freezes well, as does Risotto

I made a HUGE batch of Salmon patties (well I make fingers), then freeze them. I cooked too many once and froze them..they thawed well and I just whacked them in the oven for a bit to heat them through.

Ali, when the boys were little, I used to use the slow cooker everyday (then freeze the leftovers). I would get organised about lunchtime, by dinnertime all I had to do was dish it up.

Besides raw ingredients like meat or fish I freeze lots of other things; I grew up in a multi generational family and have memories of my grandmother cooking and freezing things as well as canning which people don't do as much anymore.

Recently we had a big cookout for a pre-wedding dinner and had lots of chicken left over. I made Chicken Enchiladas Verde and froze a few cassarole dishes for later use. I routinely make savory pies out of left overs and freeze them. In the summer I make apple pies and put them up as well.

Lots of stocks for soups and cooking although finding veal bones in Texas is near impossible so it's mostly chicken, beef and vegetable stock.

Duck fat. Comes in handy for frying potatoes!

I might add that being here in the Texas gulf coast area is a challenge for freezing things as we have these things called huricanes that cause us to loose power for long periods. I lost a whole freezer full after the last one. :greenface

I am at war with my parents re freezing. Okay- slight exaggeration.
But I always use up leftovers and buy sale items to freeze.
They bin leftovers, but buy full price items for the freezer that they know they won't eat for months.

I cringe at the waste - esp now when I can't eat their leftovers - and at them filling up the freezer with things that could easily be bought on a weekly basis. Of course it is their freezer and their money to spend as they choose. It's just weird coming back home with thrifty habits I learned from them, and realising that 30 years on, they don't have to adhere to them any more!

My items in freezer at present - from the BBQ last week uncooked sausages, 1 pork chop, half a loaf of bread, box of kebabs (ie skewered meat) that I held back until I gauged whether they were needed. Unlike all the burgers defrosted and/or cooked that ended up in the bin (despite my attempt to save them for making a version of Shepherds Pie! There was too much else to eat) Also chopped onions and peppers - frozen food but less wasteful when cooking for one than the real thing. Frozen chicken wings for Diz. Mackerel, cod and salmon.

Damn - I gotta hit the freezer for meals again!

Oh, and 2 pizzas. They were on sale and on sale in Sainsburys today. Buy One Get One Free AND in the reduced cabinet. £3.04 for two Spicy Meat Feast pizzas - bargain! Er, no. I read the colour wheel in the corner too quickly. I thought it was 18g of fat per pizza. Not ridiculous - we had one last night that was 24g in total. Shared between the three of us that's reasonable. So I thought I was paying Mum and Dad back with a real treat that we can have in a couple weeks time. But they are 18g fat PER THIRD! Gutted. I can't have it. And if Mum & Dad have it they'll have to pick the jalapenos off anyway, so they would be better off buying one for themselves. :mecry:

Tiki--I got mine at Macy's in the Martha Stewart section. They have little inserts to make two-color popsicles.

I admit I am a bit OCD about my fridge and freezer. I clean it out every Tuesday, no lie.

Leftovers are probably one of the biggest reasons I am overweight. Here's the story -- my family loves to "graze" and it's hard sometimes to get them to eat a regular meal. So if they had their way they would eat nothing but convenience foods: Hot Pockets, pot pies, microwave pizza, etc. This is not healthy or cheap, so I try to make big batches of yummy stuff like soup, chili, pasta, casseroles, things that taste great re-heated. I even package them in small 1- or 2-serving containers in the fridge.

But apparently the other three people in my house feel like Tiki. If it isn't freshly prepared, or doesn't come in a disposable tray and plastic wrap, they don't seem to believe it is edible food.

So I end up eating it, because I cannot stand to waste all that food.

I do freeze some of it though, if only so I won't feel compelled to eat chili for nine meals in a row. I use bags and freeze flat, and also sometimes one of those vacuum sealers. You can use them for liquid stuff if you first freeze it in a bowl then pop it out. I do that all the time with chicken/turkey broth.

Note: if the broth is in the freezer too long and you feel funny about using it, dogs really love crunching on broth-sicles on a hot day. ;)

I don't have an extra freezer right now, but I want one. Actually I lied; I do have one but I'm not sure it works. It's ancient and I inherited it from my mom. It's an upright and I want a chest freezer. No, I do not wish to freeze my chest. :)

I also do the home canning and dehydrating thing because I am paranoid about losing all my stored goodies if the power goes out. I grow a big garden every year and I just LOVE home-canned tomatoes and green beans. I also make zucchini relish, better than any pickle relish I've ever had. I have a sour cherry tree and so I usually can about 12 pints of those each year, and about six pints of peach preserves from the peach tree.

I have two pears and an apple tree too, but they haven't done very well yet. Maybe this year will be better. I am trying to grow blackberries and blueberries too, but I'm not having much luck with them.

This is me. As a kid I was quite happy to eat stew that'd been added to since its first cookup days before. Now...every Preston guild I may actually eat something I have made too much of and stuffed in the fridge. But it's rare. If it's spiced I'm more comfortable with it...but even then. Not really happy.

I like leftovers. Yum yum yum.
But they come from the fridge, and are ripe for picking.

I wouldn't like old food, defrosted.
The freezing process makes them food that wasn't yummy enough to eat the first time round.

Well, I like to call them "planned-overs." :)

What does work is to re-purpose them somewhat. Say, make a beef roast one day, then make it into beef veggie soup the next. Roast chicken/chicken casserole. Etc.

Oh yes, that would work for me!
Remember, like Dani I am a singleton. Evn living at home, I essentially cook for one. It's a different perspective.

And I'd eat your frozen meals like a shot - I'm sure they are yummy in their own right.
It's just my own I have an attitude of "been there, done that" to.

Yep, me too. I will eat left overs from mum's fridge, no problem.

Though half of an old-married couple now, I was single and living alone for a long time. I used to cook a "serves four" batch of something, eat one portion and freeze the other two*. I used to dish it out into one plate and two tupperware boxes straightaway (prevents accidental consumption of even larger portions!) and think of it as storing away no-cook nights for me!
Yum!





* [portion control, what's that?]

... don't buy them at all. I started that a few years ago. There was a bunch of whining at first and they still love them as a treat. I buy "it" maybe once every 2 months, or when I am away... special circumstances.

Its amazing what they'll eat when their beloved junk food isn't around. They cook & prepare stuff on their own and occasionally even make me dinner :)

Totally cool! I wish I could find mine, but if I can't I'll go see if they still have those. The kids would dig the two-toned thing.

For the record, that's not actually me at all. As long as I eat part of something when it's fresh, I will then happily proceed to eat the leftovers all week.

As for plastic disposable tray food... :greenface

I'm going to freeze strawberries as soon as the stands open, but usually I only freeze stuff that I've bought frozen... edamame, chicken fingers, popcicles...
I don't think freezing improves the flavor of anything, and I'm a minute from the market so why bother?
Leftovers get eaten quickly here.

I freeze grapes and kumquats in the summer. Good snacks for cooling off.

And at least one bottle of vodka, rum or grain.

Sorry for misinterpreting your post, Tiki.

I totally understand the single gal's perspective. For years I tried to encourage my mom to cook and eat better by doing the "planned-over" thing, but she was really picky and not a very good cook.

As for me, if I were single I'd have no problem making a bunch of something I love and eating it for every meal. I'm weird like that. Chili for dinner, breakfast, lunch, late night snack, repeat. I made this ramen noodle salad stuff that nobody liked but me, and I ate it all myself over two days. Sometimes variety is just too much work. ;)

That's exactly what I used to do when I was single... make a pot of soup or a big casserole, and then eat it for lunch and dinner all week. Didn't phase me at all.

My ex hated eating the same thing more than twice a week, so I started doing a menu plan so that I was cooking something new every night five nights a week, and we would do take-out once a week and go out to dinner once a week. It was a pretty good system.

Now that it's just me and the kids, I'm sort of doing the "big pot of food" thing again, only I try not to mix it up a bit on the days that I have them, and only have one "pot O' leftovers" in the fridge at a time.

I often buy whole salmon or roasts, cut them up, and freeze them. It's a lot cheaper and it's nice during the lean times to have food on hand.

I also do a lot of drying and canning, but it being Spring, all I really have left in the pantry is applesauce.

yes, but we use gallon bags (more than a "single portion") and fill them to a "snappable' depth -sometimes beest "scores' them as they freeze to make it easier- then we can defrost just as much as we need -portion size with us depends on who's eating, which meal it is and how hungry they all are :lol:

are different colored elephants different shapes, then?

*blinks* har. took me a moment :P What I meant was they were little plastic sleeves with the pockets shaped as elephants, and they were pink. Pink elephants for going in the G&T.

Cut a round hole in a watermelon and drain as much juice as you can. Replace the juice with vodka. Replace the cut patch for the hole, and freeze the melon.

No, *chomp* I haven't drunk a drop all day.

Poke the eyes out of a fresh cocunut , drain, fill with vodka, leave in fridge a few days.

I hadn't thought about doing fish cakes, so that's a good one that'll go down a treat here. In fact, I have some salmon in the freezer that I could use to do that with next week. (I know you can use canned and most do, but I don't have any canned fish. Just frozen fresh fish)

Thanks monster. I figured it was something like that.

Ya shoulda had something happen to you like what happened to a maternal ancestor of mine. George Austin Corey of Massachusetts fought in the Civil War, got captured by the Confederates at Cold Harbor, I think, and did six months in Andersonville.

He survived, though down to skin and bone. Let's just say the experience thoroughly affected Grandpa Corey's attitude about leftovers. It's family lore that he never allowed food to be thrown out for the rest of his days: "Leave it there, I'll eat it for breakfast," he'd insist. And he would.

I actually wouldn't wish that experience on my worst enemy.

However, a fun fact; when I was young my mother left my teenage sisters behind and took me to another state to avoid custody issues with my father. She was an alcoholic, absent much of the time, and didn't do much to provide me with food; I went hungry a lot and as a result became quite underweight and malnourished. My body still shows the scars of malnutrition if you know what to look for, and I was very ashamed of them for a long time.

Needless to say, during that time I was completely happy to eat whatever I could get, including half-eaten leftovers from strangers' plates, which my mother would bring home sometimes after the bar closed at the restaurant where she worked. I also learned to garden and forage quite successfully, and sometimes weeks would go by when I ate only what I grew, picked, or fished for, or what the charity of neighbors provided. I'm far from a picky eater.

Now, I do pretty well and can feed myself and my kids, but I'm a little weird about food, which is at times exacerbated by my OCD.

OR some Sailor Jerry RUM.... YUM...


I'm still in awe of the flat sheet method... I froze some demi glace last night with that method... lovin' it.