Frugal Friday - stock piles

Do you stock pile?  I don't mean have huge reserves of food laying around but  just taking advantage of sales, mark downs etc

I have a deep freezer and it is invaluable.  I bought one for freezing breast milk before going back to work.   I bought a chest style one because they are more economical, hold more and are cheaper than upright ones.

Why do I love my freezer? 

• All those times when the supermarket marks down bakery items I can grab a stack of bread and freeze it. 
• I can buy meat in bulk from the butcher at a cheaper price or marked down from the supermarket. 
• I can cook in bulk or freeze leftovers for lazy days, this saves money as I can grab a meal out of the freezer rather than buying takeaway.  
• Freeze egg whites when only egg yolks are needed for a recipe.
• Freeze left over veg for making pies

Cooking in bulk -  every so often I will have a baking day.

• I make mini quiches, party pies, family meat pies and veg pies (from left over veg).
• make muffins, cupcakes and cakes/loaves.
• Casseroles and lasagnes
• Soups - a hint for freezing these is to place a plastic bag in a square container, pour in soup and tie a knot in bag then freeze. Once frozen you can remove the container and just leave the soup in bag in the freezer.  Saves all your containers from disappearing into the freezer!

This saves energy by doing it all at once and not turning the oven on and off.
But you must remember to cool all food before placing in the freezer and try and distribute evenly in the freezer.

Fruit and Veg - these can be frozen.

• We pick organic blueberries every summer.  These are local and cheap so we pick several kilo and freeze them.  I made muffins this week with some we still have frozen!  
• I have also frozen tomatoes from our garden because we had a bumper crop last summer.
• Other veg such as carrots, broccoli, cauli etc can easily be frozen but are best blanched before hand.  This means bringing them to the boil then plunging them into ice water to stop the cooking process quickly.  They must be drained well then can be bagged and frozen.

Things to remember are:
1.  label and date ALL items -this avoids wastage.
2. With a chest freezer I find it difficult to reach the bottom as I am short so I use large strong plastic bags such as the green bags and put meat in one, containers in another and bread in another and sit them in the freezer.  I can easily lift a bag out to get what I want.
3. be sure to wrap and seal in containers or bags things like fish as the odour will go through things.

What do you do to live lightly and frugally?   Do you freeze?  What have you frozen with success?


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