Freezer Planning
Freezer Planning – a freezer stocked with vegetables and meat (cooked or not) makes meal preparation easy.
The year winds down… Our last CSA pickup is next week, and Thanksgiving is the week after. We have armloads of dense autumn and winter storage vegetables, and I’ve spend some time preparing them for keeping. At the same time, I’ll want room in the fridge for a turkey… I’m starting to plan the holiday meal.
Now, preserving the harvest does not work for me the way it classically does for the farm woman or gardener… I don’t harvest (or even go buy) a bushel of beans and take an afternoon to can them (or even blanch and freeze them!) Instead, throughout the summer and fall each weekend I look at the food I still have from the CSA pickups, see what needs to be used, what is piling up, what I can do about it.
We often get a bunch of a single thing – more bell peppers than I can really use this week, for instance – and it varies. Last year, I wrote about pureeing and freezing cucumbers, of all things, after we got eight one day! The year before, I froze a few containers of simmered eggplant and zucchini, as a ratatouille base (added a can of tomatoes in midwinter – it was delicious!) This year I kept up with both cukes and zukes – but there is a pint of plain simmered eggplant, and a bag of sauteed bell peppers… I think of spinach as a Spring vegetable, but that’s really because it thrives in cool weather, and we’ve had bunches recently – a while back we had a huge bag and I ended up pureeing much of it, and freezing some in cubes, and some in half pint containers… I’ve already stirred a couple of cubes into a cheese sauce with rice, for a delicious (and easy) green rice side dish.
I don’t have a lot of any of these. I only have a relatively small apartment freezer, so I don’t keep these as a serious source of our vegetables in the winter – just for the flavor… Every so often, I pull out a bag of summer flavor, and use it for a meal, as a change from the cabbage, root vegetables, and bland frozen commercial vegetables that fill our winter table. Greens, though, are another story. All summer long we cook a bunch and freeze any left over, then pull them out to add to quick meals. As the year progressed, the bunches of greens got bigger… and this last few weeks we’ve received big bunches of dense curly kale. I chopped them and cooked a big slow cooker full (since unlike other kinds of kale, that needs to simmer to be tender) and we have a gallon bag of just kale, as well as another full one and a partial one of random cooked greens. I’ll still be able to buy greens at the farmers market for a month or so (depending on the weather) but when they finish up, we’ll have these. (I’m highly unimpressed by the quality of the ones at our nearest supermarket…)
And we have two big cabbages – one red, and one green. I will similarly chop and cook the whole red one – it is assertive enough that I don’t want to eat it all in a week or so, as we will the green cabbage, but it will be good all winter. We have a variety of root vegetables – so I’ll roast them, partly because that tastes good, partly because it takes less storage space. (I may add a winter squash – that’s good, and we have three!) This is quite a year for Brussels sprouts, which we love – they keep well (and we’ll have them for Thanksgiving!) but I’ll also probably blanch and freeze some.
Then there are the vegetables I keep mostly for flavor. The week we got three pounds of slicing tomatoes and 2 pints of cherry tomatoes I popped one pint in a freezer bag – they’ll be a treat in March! We got celery quite often this year, so the outer stalks are ready to go into soup and stew all winter, as it already has all summer. (We ate the tender inner ones right away!) The last month we’ve had big intense scallions, too strong for salad, but perfect for an Asian soup or stir fry – I froze some of them, chopped and ready for use. Almost every week brought another bunch of herbs – I’ve been tossing them into all kinds of dishes, but also freezing tarragon, sage, and rosemary whole, and pureeing basil, oregano, thyme, mint, and parsley. This year, though, I didn’t freeze onions, as I have in the past… I can no longer get ten pound bags of absolutely fresh onions at a great discount, as I had for several years, so it doesn’t make as much sense. I will do some, just for the convenience, when I have more freezer space.
After all, half my freezer space is taken by other food. There are only two of us, but it often makes the most economic sense to buy a whole pork loin, for instance, and cut it into roasts and chops. I buy a ham on sale, and use it a little at a time. So-called Family packs of meat are less expensive, and even if we just get a regular put up, or, say, a chicken, there’s usually more than we’ll eat in one meal – it often makes sense to buy the larger amount and freeze it. I also, in the Plan for Meals concept, make sure I always have cooked meat – chicken, slow cooked pork – so I can just pull something out, heat it up, and make a meal. (We finished the last meatloaf muffins last week – time for a new batch… and I haven’t made chili for a while.) I even have cubes of partly cooked azuki beans to drop in a pot of rice for Red Bean Rice… None of that is kept as long as some of the vegetables, of course – I make sure we rotate though meat regularly. I also often have either soup or homemade broth. (Usually at least some of that is frozen in cubes, to drop into other dishes for just a splash of flavor and moisture.) In winter, when I’ll have more space, but we don’t eat salad for lunch, I’ll definitely have homemade soup…
Now – I don’t expect anyone else to do exactly what I do. (I don’t expect anyone else to be in exactly the same situation I’m in. I don’t do exactly the same, one year to another.) I am just trying to illustrate in concrete terms a few of the ideas you can use to – depending on your own needs – keep up with a busy CSA, or farmer’s market or garden. Or take advantage of a sale at your supermarket (Great price on bell peppers! But they don’t keep well, what would I… saute, freeze, use later. All right, then.)
Or just have food ready – as I have so often spoken about – to pull out, toss in a pan, and make a meal of. Put on a pot for your choice of pasta. Take cooked chicken, a cube of pureed oregano, some roast tomatoes, some sauteed peppers, onion if available, and a cube or two of chicken broth, toss in a pan and heat. Chop and add two greens muffins. Toss with cooked pasta, sprinkle with parmesan, you have a great meal in the time it took to cook the pasta… I don’t usually write these up as recipes (I probably should, a few times,) but many of my WIAW dinners are prepared this way. We need meals like that.
Wow I really need to acquire some of your meal planning skills. The only consistent freezer planning I do is cook a big batch grains (brown rice, quinoa, millet, etc) and freeze for the week. I do that with soup too.
Well, that’s where I started… Believe me, I didn’t reach this level overnight.
I’d also been single for a long time, and got in the habit of cooking extra then. And it all built from there, when I needed it…
Even just one or two of these things can really make life easier – not everyone will want to do everything. Try one food in bulk, see how you like it and when you use it, and go from there!
I’m impressed how organized you are! My freezer could do with the same treatment. Good post.
LOL – it’s not always quite that organized… But I do generally know pretty much what I have and roughly where it is – since finding it easily is the whole point!
But thank you – I’m hoping that some of the ideas are useful for people.
This is really such an fantastic post of freezing our day to day food ingredients in a simple way..so in this way no wastage..thanks for sharing 🙂
Thank you!
Yes, I didn’t even really talk about avoiding waste, but with just two of us that is also an aspect. The greens, for instance, are usually leftovers that we immediately freeze in usable portions, instead of leaving to sour in the fridge (which, um, had been known to happen before we started freezing them…) We’re not going to eat a whole chicken, or even a whole package of pork chops – getting stuff into the freezer quickly cuts down on waste, and gives us more variety over the long run.
I always buys large cuts of meat, split them and freeze too. I also cook large batches and freeze. However, I rarely cook food, split them and sorta choose and pick and assemble them to become a meal. That’s just super awesome. I’m inspired. Now the only problem is space in the freezer. :p
Thank you – I hope the idea helps!
I hear you about space, though – I have much less space in my freezer than many people I know (though more than I have ever had before…) I find, though, that all this tends to take less room than commercially prepared packaged foods (in their boxes…) so merely replacing the frozen dinners and such did help. The flattened zip bags use space most efficiently, but they sometimes slide… watch out! LOL
I love having my freezer stocked! A great way to get through the crazy days!
It really makes the holidays so much easier…
I used to work retail, which was another factor in working out this system – All December, I’m going to want to come home after a long hard day and sit down. What can I do to make that happen?
I love having something in my freezer for those days when you don’t want to cook! Most time it happens accidentally, but your post gives me new ideas for planning. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you! I hope it helps!
A lot of mine do start out as “Well, there are leftovers…” but at the same time, there’s a pork shoulder in the slow cooker as I write. I can’t use all that at once, for just two of us – but the cooked meat over the next month will be invaluable. And if I didn’t plan like this, I’d just never buy it at all.
You have some great meal planning skills! I can never plan ahead 🙁 But there are some great tips in this article that I hope to use from now on
Thank you!
A big part of this for me was that the standard approach to planning never worked for me. I’d plan a meal and – get home late, or have a migraine (or just not want that meal that night!) But totally winging it just wasn’t working, either…
So, not all my meals are from my freezer or my staples – I still do wing it some of the time. But I always have that fallback…
And this is very much mix and match – not just meals, but ideas. You do what works for you, and if any one piece helps at all, I’m delighted.
This is great! My freezer is absolutely crucial to my meal planning , especially since I cook so much for recipe testing and need to make sure it all actually gets eaten!
I love this! I definitely need to start planning my freezer meals more! Such a great way to cut back on waste!
It is a great idea to know what you have in the freezer. Hubby used to have a huge blackboard where he wrote the entire inventory of what we had in the freezer. And when our college age children came over and took food out of the freezer for their apartments, Hubby’s only stipulation was that they mark it down. I know I’ve bought duplicates before because I didn’t check.
Recently i invested in to a second freezer that i placed in the garage , perfect for all freezer meals i make non stop!
I love capitalizing on freezer space, it is such a great way to stock up and use all that produce! Great tips and ideas here!
Now that both hubby and I are back to fulltime I have realized that organization is everything to make sure we don’t order pizza every night! That’s a really useful post for all us busy bees!
Huge freezer fan right here! We just subscribed to butcher box. I love being able to take meat out of the freezer for dinner later that night or the next day with no trip to the store! I also have to cook for two and like to break down bigger cuts and freeze the rest, it makes so much sense. I’ll definitely have to try your tips with the vegetables!
I’m so bad at planning meals for the week. Especially when it comes to freezer meals, because I never get the right balance of meals that taste good when they’re reheated. Gonna have to try some of your tips!
I agree, having your freezer stocked makes life so much easier! Yours is so organized!
Wow, your planning skills are amazing!! These are some really great ideas that I never would have thought to do. Thank you for sharing all these tips
Oh you’re so organized. I’m so lazy in keeping my freezer tidy. Compering to you, I’m such a noob. These tips and ideas are very helpful. Thanks for sharing.