Friday, November 07, 2008

Vintage is the only word for it

Vintage.

That's the quality of stuff I'm finding in my freezer. And that's my next de-cluttering challenge to you. Freezer diving.

Let me back up.

Traditionally, October is the month to clean the chest freezer in the garage in prep of hunting season. Except our freezer is pretty good sized so last year I didn't really NEED to clean it to put a deer AND an elk in there. Plus, of course, some random chunks of beef.

But then I decided I couldn't stand the mess in the fridge freezer so I emptied the whole thing into the garage freezer.

And it was full.

So I started, bit by bit, feeding everything in it to my family.

Here's an inventory of what I've excavated so far... and still digging:

1. A turkey. Ten pounder. Yummy. See below.
2. A lot of frozen juice in random flavors. Apparently I got a flat of it at Costco. Damn you Costco. And damn me for my amateur impulse shopping ways. But it all mixed up ok and, although I'm not normally a huge juice drinker it has been fun.
3. Frozen fruit. Lots of it. A giant block of frozen goodness from, you guessed it, Costco and random assorted plastic containers and bags of peaches, grapes, melon & bananas that I froze at the last second before they went bad. Smoothies. Yummy, yummy smoothies.
4. Paint brushes and rollers. These were not fed to the children. But I did toss the ones that match up with paint projects long done... and I promise to get motivated to finish the ones that are still in there.
5. A whole box of Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches.
6. Tons of homemade soup in bags for work lunches. Bringing them into the house freezer a few at a time and eating them.
7. Ice packs. And more ice packs. And more ice packs.
8. Butter & Bacon. But not in large quantities.
9. Chocolate. Purchased post-holiday and stashed. I figure it counts as a workout if I have to hike all the way to the back of the shop to get a chocolate fix. Right?
10. Vegetables. Lots of garden veggies. My mom apparently processed, packaged & froze a whole lotta stuff while I was groggily wandering around the house after sinus surgery in September. Gotta love that. Beets, beans, corn. Cute little baggies of frozen corn all ready to go in the microwave and eat. It does explain where these photos came from.
11. Beef. But not as much as I thought. A few packages of hamburger, some steaks and a roast. I think I'll cook the roast this weekend after I make soup.
12. Elk. Only one yummy package of salami left. Mostly burger but still some rounds and loins so we are working on those. It's so funny... all year long I'm a little miserly about eating it and then in October and November we have a marathon of meat.
13. Deer sausage. Two precious packages. This stuff makes the most incredible stuffed squash. And anything else you can think of. Love it. And it is a totally impressive thing to fix for people who claim they don't like venison.
14. Antelope and goat steaks.... 2 packages..... how the HELL did these sneak into my freezer? Ew. Ew. Ew. Uck.
15. Chicken Nuggets.
16. Chicken & Veggie Dumplings. I love these. I buy them at Costco when I have a coupon and we eat them with noodles instead of ordering Chinese food.... a weak but acceptable substitution.
17. Apple Juice.
18. Popcorn Chicken. Hot accidentally got this..... I love it but it costs too much to be a part of our regular diet. I promise you this package won't last long.
19. Beans. Frozen, cooked black beans.... better than canned and cheaper as well. I just learned how to do this.
20. Flour. Where do YOU store that giant Costco bag of flour? I put it in one of those over-sized ziplock things and throw it in the freezer.
21. Frozen milk cartons of water. To take up space and make the freezer more efficient.... they would also be our water supply if the power went out for a few days. When I first did this I put a giant plastic tub in the bottom of the freezer and filled it with water. Wow, was that a learning experience. DON'T DO IT.
22. Bread. I rotate sandwich bread & mini bagels pretty well but there are some very aged hamburger buns in there.... those gotta go.
23. Coffee. Only one extra bag of whole beans. Not bad.

That's it. That's what I've found so far. How about you?

4 comments:

M&Co. said...

Damn Homestead! You have more in your deep freezer than I have in my whole kitchen. I mean at your house you could live for weeks and weeks if you got snowed in. At my house? We could live for four days a week tops.

Homestead said...

Even longer than that if you don't mind eating nothing but meat and paint brushes...

It's part of the Redneck Philosophy.

Unknown said...

I'm lost on the paint tools. In the freezer?

I must know more about freezing black beans. Black beans is our snowed in/haven't been to town in 3 weeks staple. Do you just cook and stuff in bag and freeze?

The water jugs is a great idea. Duh, why didn't I think of that? Space taker, emergency water supply, plus helps keep it cold in there without power. I've often wondered what we would do if the power went out for days. In the past we've packed the freezer contents into coolers and buried them in snow, but that was before a chest freezer.

Mrs. Peterson said...

Our shop freezer has a few pounds of burger, some HUGE pork roasts (they were a gift--don't ask), and lots and lots of weird things like beef liver and tongue that will be there forever, unless we desperately need dog food. Hubby is elk hunting right now...my hopes are not up though. We need to fatten a steer.
Man. Do I feel like a homesteader or what???!!!