Clearing Out the Freezer/Fridge

In this era of eating in, I realize while I keep an abundance of food at home I have definitely eaten more food that I made (even if it is a simple biscuit sandwich) in the last couple of weeks than I have in years.

A couple of weeks ago I had my freezer and fridge toss items out at me but now I am gearing up for the 1st set of groceries in over 20 days. They arrive tonight. And it is a much larger quantity than I would typically have to hand. In preparation, I am down to less than 2 oz of Kilgus' heavy cream and less than 8 oz of maple syrup to make space in the refrigerator. I also anticipate prepping artichokes today or tomorrow.

The freezer had me actually pull some applesauce I made to use on the biscuits while re-organizing a shelf. The applesauce was dated 2011!

On the upside, it appears I have at least 3# of butter in the freezer so I don't need to buy that for the moment.

So how are you organizing and using up your food in this season?

I cleaned out my fridge. Embarrased to say that I found things in there that I couldn't identify. Some things I never knew I bought, much less had in the fridge. Some with a best use by of 2015. Haven't convinced myself to throw out the jar of homemade pickled ginger I made 10 years ago, I think.

Haven't attacked the freezer yet, but need to.

we keep well stocked and *generally* well inventoried pantry and two fridges, but in a deep clean of one of the freezers i unearthed two surprises: more bananas than I would have thought (we eat fresh regularly and toss overripe ones in freezer and then regularly make banana bread), so we've been making smoothies for breakfast with these (nuke frozen banana for 1 minute is enough defrosting to peel and then the chunky partly frozen is a nice main body for a smoothie, to which we add a little greek yogurt, little milk, some berries or peanut butter) - and then there were two little packs of two each of whole foods pork blueberry breakfast sausage, which our kid used to eat for lunch often as a toddler. the neat printed label from whole foods clearly revealed that one of the packs was from 2015. we decided to try to cook it anyway; the result was, as my husband (who used to live in china and cooks chinese food very well) remarked, rather like lap cheong (very dry aged!). i also have in my cheese drawer a large collection of parmesan rinds that are waiting for soup, so gotta use those up.

Things that I am working out of my refrigerator and freezers:

1) Variety of ice cream toppings from last year's ice cream social.
2) Last 3# (out of 77#) of the Arizona medjool dates that I received from the produce rescue in 2018.
3) Five pieces of carrot cake from the local casinos.
4) Elk steak and burger from my neighbor - tonight's dinner.
5) Maple sugar from 2013 - the last batch my MIL made.


I really do not have that much old stuff under refrigeration as we were gone the month of October and consolidated everything from my two freezers into my indoor one.

My pantry in completely the opposite and it has been fairly heavily packed since last May. With my inability to shop for the next couple months, I have some realk plans to rid myself of the items that have been there for 2-3 years.

HI,

Typical of a pre-holiday prep in my house: let's do something we could do just about any other time of the year. My Dad suggested defrosting the freezer.

Defrosting has been discussed on-and-off since last fall, when the freezer had a meltdown. It was so bad, I needed to get dry ice to recover any order, which worked very well. Ever since that time, we have had lots of food with a heavy ice layer. A few items one could not lift off the shelf.

Now this is done, I learned I need to use the several gallons of stock squirreled in the freezer. When sheltering at home began, I knew I had 20 pounds of butter. I now realize we probably had even more, because I have over 20 pounds now. I found the octopus I bought a few months ago and never located it. I have no immediate need for frozen vegetables.

Surprisingly little was throw away: some sliced ham whose bag tore and few unidentifiable objects whose label smeared away.

Regards,
Cathy2

Worked our way thru a whole ham and leg of lamb besides yakisoba noodles, lobster stock and some sweet and sour cabbage borscht.

Transformed a who-knows-how-old bag of frozen edamame into "hummus" earlier today. It turned out way better than I expected. It's always good to have tahini on hand.

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:Transformed a who-knows-how-old bag of frozen edamame into "hummus" earlier today. It turned out way better than I expected. It's always good to have tahini on hand.

=R=

Thanks for the post. I just whipped up a batch with a not too old bag of edamame. Tastes great on matzah.

ronnie_suburban wrote:Transformed a who-knows-how-old bag of frozen edamame into "hummus" earlier today. It turned out way better than I expected. It's always good to have tahini on hand.

=R=

Reminds me of a really great dip I made once with a bag of frozen peas (straight from freezer to food processor), olive oil, probably some other stuff too.