Friday, September 12, 2008

Freezer!

Being Frugal has a post today asking about purchasing a freezer. Feel free to pop over and give her some input!

Last June my co-worker asked if I would like her old chest freezer, she was getting a new one. I jumped on the opportunity and was happy with it. It is kept in our unheated garage so during the winter it runs very little, if at all. For the first while, I didn’t use it much, I was single and lived alone. It didn’t make sense to stock-pile that much food.

Once I got married, the freezer got utilized much more! We used some of the money we received at our wedding to buy a whole NY Strip. We had it sliced into 18 steaks and have been enjoying them all summer long. I haven’t gotten into freezer cooking too much but am going to try it out more in the new few weeks.

When our freezer broke a few weeks ago, we were bummed and knew that a new one was needed. We searched and found that our tiny hometown “general” store had the best price. So we made plans to buy a freezer. Hubby went out to move the old freezer when he noticed it was humming. He opened it up and the ice cube tray we stuck in there for a test was frozen solid. What?? He consulted the best home sources he knows: His Dad and the Home Depot Book. After a little reading, he discovered that long running appliances shouldn’t be plugged into a GFCI outlet due to some electrical stuff I didn’t understand. Our freezer was plugged into a GFCI outlet. So after a quick trip to Home Depot for a new outlet, new ground wire and a few tools, the outlet is replaced and our freezer is back in running order!

$368 for a new freezer OR $20 for outlet, wire, wire strippers and other misc. Yay!

And the freezer “breaking” got me motivated to try freezing things differently by using bins/baskets/tubs/totes/crates in the freezer and keep like items grouped together. I had veggies buried under cheese under chicken under ice cream. Yikes! And I’m going to keep an inventory list, to keep a more even balance of food in stock. I had like 15 boxes of broccoli and cheese but only 1 bag of carrots. And a ton of cheddar but no mozzarella. And I’ll use the list to keep better tabs on what I actually have, I found some bags of mystery food with no date or anything (bad, bad, bad) so I just threw them away.

Sonshine has a great post about freezer cooking and links to lots of helpful info. She (and her posts with links) have been my motivation and inspiration after we got the freezer back running to do things differently and better!

1 comment:

Sonshine said...

Thanks for linking me! :)

To answer your question about freezing casseroles. Don't leave the item in the glass dish! However, take the time to line your glass dish with foil and stick it in the freezer that way. Once the food is frozen, take the dish out of your freezer pop the food in the foil liner out of the dish and stick the foil wrapped meal into a ziploc bag and label it! If you are confused...head over here to Amy's blog! She explains how to do the foil liner in pan freezer meals. :)

Oh you can use the foil pans too. They are easy to wash and reuse as long as you are careful when dishing out the food! As if you use foil pans and you don't get the ones with plastic clear lids you can use foil for your lid and then just write directly on the foil what is in the dish along with a date.

HTH in your freezer cooking endeavors! :)