Hello!

I hope this finds you well.

This last weekend we pressed the apples we harvested from my dad’s yard across the street. So. Many. Apples!

But, before we could press, we needed to straighten up our freezers so we could make more room for juice!

In the process, I got to looking at the things we freeze for our family and I thought I’d share how freezing food makes my cooking efforts so much easier.

I have learned to enjoy cooking through the years with a lot of practice and patience (mostly the patience of my family.) But I also learned that I don’t like spending a great deal of time cooking every day. Some days I cook a lot and other days I pull something out of the freezer to make a meal in quicktime.

I’m also grateful for my friends who have taught me how to freeze things to make organizing a freezer possible! Their skills have been a blessing to me!

Here are some of the things I freeze to speedup daily meal prep, stretch our food budget, and keep the quality of our diet high too:

Cooked hamburger (stored in pound size square freezer containers.)

Berries (we picked or purchased on sale during the summer.)

Peaches (halves flash frozen then put into bags. This way, the halves don’t stick to each other and you can use only as many as you need to top pancakes or put into a pie or smoothie.)

Bread (some from the store and some homemade.)

Butter (purchased in bulk on sale, usually at Thanksgiving time.)

Cooked Rice

Muffins (homemade- today I ate the last lemon blueberry muffin I made a few months ago for a snack!)

Soup and Chili (again in small square plastic containers. Good for one person to warm up for lunch or dinner.)

Meatballs (ready to be added to spaghetti or other sauce.)

Greens (washed and torn kale and spinach from the garden I put into smoothies or sauces.)

Bone broth (made in bulk from soup bones or from cooking chicken in the crockpot.)

Banana and Zucchini and Pumpkin bread or cake (sliced and wrapped in plastic wrap, then foil.)

Applesauce (both in small plastic freezer containers or flash frozen flat in zippered freezer bags. When they’re flat then they stack well or line up in organizing containers.)

Meat (in bulk for a better quality and price.)

Seeds (for the garden)

Corn (cut off the cob after 3 minutes in boiling water.)

Flour (freshly ground from our storage wheat. The cold temperatures hold the nutrition in the wheat germ.)

Cooked grains (usually quinoa and oatmeal to throw into cakes.)

Juice (carrot, apple, tart cherry from our garden and trees.)

Cooked squash, butternut and banana are my favorites (and I use them in any recipe that calls for pumpkin!)

Onions and Peppers (chopped: this one thing saves a lot of time since my sous chef grew up and moved out.)

Cooked beans (in small square plastic containers.)

Cream, Parmesan and Cream Cheese (purchased on sale.)

Whew! I was really surprised by this list! I feel so blessed by the abundance of the harvest this year and from the hard work of my husband who is a teacher/farmer and loves to tend a big garden in the summertime.

What do you like to store? I’d love to hear about it!

Take good care,