Using stuff up (extreme case!)

dalrymple23

The bowels of the chest freezer have unearthed all sorts of unknowns. Is that unnamed item gravy or chocolate sauce?
A voyage of discovery always! I occasionally date things (rarely) but OH did discover a 2020 number (meat). We ate it and are still here!!

My bugbear at the moment is that sir has put his late lamented buzzard in there. There is a drawer in the upright freezer full of day old chicks (above the p uddings and below the cheeses and herbs). I can deal with that. But the corpse in the chest is a bit OTT!!! He is a falconer, by the way, not a mass murderer!!

I didn’t think that falconers flew buzzards as they’re mainly carrion eaters, not hunters…

My large ancient Bosch upright freezer broke down recently. It’s in an unheated room so I had to replace it with a Beko as they are the only ones suitable for garages and outbuildings. Size wise the internal capacity didn’t appear to be a lot smaller but it’s amazing how just a small reduction in capacity seems to reduce how much you can keep in it. Not only that but it is so flimsy compared to the Bosch. I did read that mini fridges and freezers are actually very energy efficient so I did think of getting one to use if I needed a bit of extra storage but they can’t be used in rooms that get too cold ( I did buy a mini fridge for that room but it didn’t work as the temperature went under 10 degrees in winter). I would have bought a small chest freezer but there isn’t enough room above it because of wall cupboards. The fridge in my kitchen doesn’t have much storage space, either, so storing food is problematic. I don’t have room for a fridge freezer in the kitchen. On top of that no matter where in the fridge I store it salad seems to freeze! I have thought about getting a small Beko chest freezer that can be stored in the garage. I’m really missing my Bosch! I do things like putting flour in the freezer for a week when I buy it to kill off flour mites and it doesn’t take much to fill the freezer especially if eg I want to freeze a loaf of bread too.

My freezer has been playing up since Easter and refusing to raise the temperature from -26° - everything is rock hard! It is a 9 drawer standing cupboard-style affair. It's over 30 years old so we are looking to replace it with a new one.

Recently the German version of Which which we subscribe to, did a test on freezers and came to the conclusion that the best value are the half-height ones. (I can't fit a chest freezer in as I don't have the width.)

I am now using up everything in the freezer to see if a smaller one would be big enough. If the drawers were deeper I think it may well do. Now there are only the two of us I don't really need it so much and I go shopping every week so I don't need so much stuff in reserve.

Has anyone else downsized a freezer and did you regret it?

My lovely husband was in general very good, and would cook or wash up or whatever needed doing, but we had one particular thing that we would argue about. I am Yorkshire , and definitely brought up in the waste not want not mode. So when there would be a very small amount of gravy, sauce or mince or whatever, I would catch him preparing to throw it away and I would say "STOP" dont waste that! He would sigh but accept the ruling. I used to make lovely shin beef stew in the "old " days in my pressure cooker. The gravy was always wonderful, and so I used to freeze any small amount of gravy left over into an icecube maker. So there would be various little amounts of gravy in these icecubes. When they were frozen, I would decamp them into the correct plastic bags. So there would be gravy from a lamb roast and chicken gravy etc. Then if I had just ordinary quite boring mince, I would add these cubes of good shin gravy which added flavour to the mince. I also often would make up an amount of mince or whatever and there would be enough for 2 dinners and a small amount which I would freeze and label. Then I have quite a choice of things to add to my jacket potato! On a cold and miserable day when my back is really painful and I have been stood up too long, my jacket potato absolutely fills the gap, of something warm and easy to make and cheering. Goodness I am starving now!1

We have three freezers. Everything in them is labelled with date, item and number of portions. I keep a typed list of freezers and contents on the main kitchen freezer. Things are ticked off when used. I update the list once a week when I’ve been shopping.

dalrymple23

The bowels of the chest freezer have unearthed all sorts of unknowns. Is that unnamed item gravy or chocolate sauce?
A voyage of discovery always! I occasionally date things (rarely) but OH did discover a 2020 number (meat). We ate it and are still here!!

My bugbear at the moment is that sir has put his late lamented buzzard in there. There is a drawer in the upright freezer full of day old chicks (above the p uddings and below the cheeses and herbs). I can deal with that. But the corpse in the chest is a bit OTT!!! He is a falconer, by the way, not a mass murderer!!

Buzzard curry?

The bowels of the chest freezer have unearthed all sorts of unknowns. Is that unnamed item gravy or chocolate sauce?
A voyage of discovery always! I occasionally date things (rarely) but OH did discover a 2020 number (meat). We ate it and are still here!!

My bugbear at the moment is that sir has put his late lamented buzzard in there. There is a drawer in the upright freezer full of day old chicks (above the p uddings and below the cheeses and herbs). I can deal with that. But the corpse in the chest is a bit OTT!!! He is a falconer, by the way, not a mass murderer!!

The honey found in Egyptian tombs was perfectly ok to eat but couldn't be sold because it had no Best Before or Use By date on it 🍯

Bazza

I ignore all dates. If a wooly mammoth can be dug out of a glacier still looking like a wooly mammoth, a few months out of date wouldn’t bother me at all. If it looks and smells ok when defrosted I’ll cook and eat it without a second thought. Not poisoned anyone yet!

I absolutely love that comment, made me laugh out loud.
I’m going to re-use it and substitute it with Oetztaler Man (who was found high up on the glacier between Austria and Italy) - although to be fair he didn’t look that good when he came out of the ice 😃

I made turkey curry a couple of weeks ago with the last of the Christmas turkey ~that I’d forgotten was in the freezer~. And very good it was too.

I’m throwing out my pandemic stockpile quinoa. It’s probably ok but I can’t remember the last time I cooked some. It’ll go into the brown bin. My larder is still overflowing with pandemic stuff even though a lot of it went when I had the flour mite infestation. I’ve still got tins of tomatoes and kidney beans that I’ll use even though they’re well past their use by date. I only recently started labelling everything when I freeze it. Going to use up everything in the freezer and start again, especially now that my new freezer is much smaller than my old one.

I don't find that extreme....just normal

I ignore all dates. If a wooly mammoth can be dug out of a glacier still looking like a wooly mammoth, a few months out of date wouldn’t bother me at all. If it looks and smells ok when defrosted I’ll cook and eat it without a second thought. Not poisoned anyone yet!

Something that has helped me with organizing the freezer: Label and date everything, store like types of foods together, list contents by type and post on freezer door, cross off as they're used. It has helped a lot but of course sometimes my senior brain forgets to cross off lol.

I am determined to actually use up some things I have BUT hubby has decided to "help" me shop, so it is at the moment a losing battle.
Added to which quite a bit is taken up by food that DGS has said he likes and then not eaten for months, and for his vegan friend who comes to tea quite often.
Tonight, is a Slimming world meal that has been in there for 3 months as I am only feeding me

My daughter loves her “freezer surprise”. Fortunately she is a savoury girl so she usually gets dinner, but what will it be? I have to label everything, can’t remember my own name some days.

I tend to buy things on special offer and get more than I need so they just sit there. Also I generally take food out of the large plastic trays as they take up room that I don't have, so if the label comes off I'm in trouble, though I do usually cut the name off the pack and attach it. You can generally recognise different kinds of meat and poultry, it's mince or things in gravy or sauce that are the problem.
At the moment I'm not buying meat, fish or poultry in a vain attempt to empty my freezer a little.

Berries from the garden - 2020!
😯
Made into jam/jelly so well boiled!

I have just taken three things out of my freezer.

One: a fridge dish full of pork gravy - been there since Christmas. I hope a six-month old kitten will devour it, as she is a bottomless pit , naturally enough at her age.

Two: a fridge dish containing ? No idea at all, may be soup. Hardly what we want in this sultry, thundery weather.

Three: I suspect it is cabbage in white sauce - yet another wintry dish, but at least if I am right it can go on the compost.

I’d feel much the same about packs of sausages, Farmor, but the turkey had been cooked and was then sitting about for at least 3 days before I got around to stripping it. So IMO just a bit different. I wouldn’t usually leave it so long - it would have gone in a cold-weather soup or stew.

I need a new freezer, but I have to, first of all, consume all that’s in there 😫

At least you knew what it was in the freezer, I can never be bothered to label mine. I have actually had an occasion that even defrosted I wasn't sure what it was and when it got deposited in the freezer!

That's not extreme in our house. We got a new freezer recently and I've been using up stuff that had been lurking at the bottom of old chest freezer. We had sausages at the weekend dated April 2024 - absolutely fine. There were other things about 2 years old. If they've been frozen while still fresh, they're still fine.