Learn to love your freezer…

I LOVE our freezers.

That’s right-plural…!

We have 3 drawers underneath the fridge in the kitchen, and then someone gave us their old freezer when we moved, so we have two! Yay!

Our kindly donated freezer, with it’s improvised “Le Creuest” sticker…

They are both rammed full of all sorts of things, and I am a little obsessive about making things to freeze. To the point I get slightly twitchy if we actually take meals out of the freezer to eat. I guess it’s a comfort thing knowing that they are there if we really need them…(wierd I know)

In the spirit of ‘Waste not, want not’ we all need to start embracing our freezers….

I saw this great post recently on Pinterest (I think it was tweeted by @fifesmallholder-you can find their lovely blog here).

It is called “31 Things you can Freeze to save Time and Money”, (now that should get your attention!) on One Good Thing by Jillie.

So it got me thinking…

Here are the things I already do/freeze to save time and money:

• If I’m making biscuits or cookies, I always make a double batch, and then freeze a load. It takes no extra effort, and saves time next time you run out of biscuits
• Same goes with bread or rolls, or hot cross buns, or welsh cakes….
• We buy big bottles of milk and freeze them, in a (vain) attempt to avoid that ‘just popping in for some milk, and spending £30’ scenario

• I will often deliberately overcook, or batch cook some big meals, to portion up and freeze for days when I know time will be tight
• Any bananas that are starting to go a little too black get made into smoothies, OR frozen in their skins. They can then be defrosted and used in baking, or smoothies. Or if you are super-organised, you can peel them, and chop them up before freezing and then add to smoothies, to avoid that slightly warm smoothie thing that can sometimes happen
• You can do the same with any manky bits of fruit at all really
• Pasta sauces-again, make double. I do this with tomato sauce, and also cheese sauce too
• Ginger-the big old root stuff-we freeze it as we never get through a big ‘knob’ (cue sniggering) in time, and then grate it frozen into whatever we want it for
• Soup-always make a big batch, and freeze some for another time

Here are some things I knew you could freeze, but always forget to:

• Butter-never tried freezing a whole block, but have frozen homemade garlic butter before, which seemed to come out ok…
• Herbs-you are supposed to chop them and freeze them in water in ice cube trays I think-I have never got round to this
• Stock-You can freeze it if you are good enough to make your own. I am not unfortunately
• Pesto-I keep meaning to try this-make some pesto, and then freeze in ice cube trays, ready to whip out and add to pasta
• Chopped veg-a good tip from Jillie is to freeze them flat in a freezer bag, and then as they are freezing wedge portion sized ‘score lines’ into them, so you can break off just as much as you want
• Smoothies and fruit juice-if these are ever reduced or on offer, snap ’em up, and stash ’em in the freezer

Here are some things I wasn’t really sure whether or not you can freeze, but it turns out you can!:

• Rice-I think the key is getting it to cool down quickly, otherwise it can give you food poisoning… Jillie recommends spreading it out on some parchment paper on a baking tray and freezing it straight away. Then when it has frozen you can scoop it into freezer bags
• Pasta-mine never seems that great second time around after it has been in the freezer. Will try again!
• Mashed potato-Not sure why this didn’t occur to me-I freeze shepherds pie etc all the time, but have never frozen straight mashed potato when we have a glut

And here are some things it would never have occurred to me to freeze, but I’m going to start!:

• Eggs-I freeze the whites, but apparently you can freeze the whole eggs too (not in their shells…)
• Lemon/lime juice and zest. We often end up with a bullet hard zestless lemon in the fridge about 2 weeks after we have used the zest in some recipe or other. Well no more! Now I am going to freeze the juice in, yes you guessed it, ice cube trays!!
• Buttercream. Who knew?!
• Crisps and pretzels. I know. Slightly wierd. I would have thought they would go soft. Will let you know…
• Sandwiches-make them in advance (without the salad-y bits) and then smugly pull them out of the freezer ready for a ‘hassle-free’ work-day morning (is there such a thing?)

So there we have it.

Now, where can I find some secondhand ice cube trays…??