I’d like to make a case for owning a dedicated freezer. Somewhat outrageously, we have two, but that’s only because Pete keeps refusing to build me a coolroom.
Yes, it does cost us extra electricity to run the freezers, but they save us a fortune. Plus we switched over to 100% green energy a couple of years ago, so I’m feeling a little less angst-ridden about our consumption now.
What the freezer does is this: it enables us to process more of our food at home. So in mid-winter, we can have home-frozen plums to use in a dessert, rather than having to purchase tinned ones. And when roma tomatoes are out of season, we’ll still be eating homemade passata, made when they were just $1/kilo.
We store all our bread and flour in the second freezer, and because we’re able to do that, we haven’t had to buy a loaf for over three years. I once calculated that we save about $40 a week on sourdough by baking our own. Over 156 weeks, that comes to $6,240! Even if we were only buying supermarket bread, we would still have saved nearly $4,000. And that’s just the saving on bread alone!
Here are some of the other things we freeze:
- we buy fresh garlic in bulk from Diana and Ian, and freeze it broken into unpeeled cloves. It lasts well in the fridge for ages.
- when stone fruit are in season, we buy it in boxes. We eat some, jam some and freeze the rest, cut in half and stoned, vacuum sealed. Then in the depths of winter, we can make an apricot slice, or another batch of plum jam.
- baked goods always freeze well, and at any given time, our freezer is packed with cookies, meringues, leftover cakes (for trifle) and various other sweet treats. We also keep rolls of cookie dough, ready to bake for an instant dessert as needed.
- frozen berries – we keep raspberries, boysenberries, strawberries, blueberries and cherries in the freezer. Most of these we buy frozen in bulk, but the strawberries and cherries are purchased from the markets when they’re in season and washed and frozen. This is where the freezer really comes into its own – being able to store and extend the life of seasonal produce.
- we keep an entire freezer drawer full of tomato passata. Pete will now only make it when roma tomatoes are in season, and we freeze it in small takeaway containers. As we eat a lot of Italian food, we’ll go through several tubs every week.
- precooked meals and sauces – when we have time, we’ll make a double batch of bolognese sauce, or chicken curry. There’s also a healthy supply of pesto, frozen in little ziplock bags. Having these tucked away in the freezer means we’re less likely to order takeaway when we’re tired and exhausted.
- juice and rind -we buy a box each of lemons and limes once a year, squeeze them all and grate the rind, then freeze the lot. The juice is stored in ice-cube bags (trays would work as well) and the frozen rind keeps brilliantly in a small tub, from which it can be scooped out as needed for cakes and desserts.
If you have any suggestions for things I can add to this list, please let me know. There’s always room to squeeze a little more into the freezer…
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Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Celia,
We, also, have a freezer that I use to save money on foods that are seasonal. I buy butter when it is on sale and freeze it in bulk. I won’t pay over $2 a pound for butter, so this enables me to keep on baking even when it hits the top of its market value.
And then I like to make quiches and pies in bulk and have them in the freezer to give away or for a quick lunch/dessert.
I freeze my herbs in the summer (chopped and frozen in a teaspoon of water in an ice cube tray) to add to soups and casseroles later in the year.
I love the convenience of food ready to go in my freezer!
Heidi
Heidi, butter is one thing I don’t freeze! It last so long these days that I just keep it in the fridge. I don’t keep many pies in the freezer, but there’s usually some sweet shortcrust pastry in there, waiting for an apple pie. :)
Celia I have a walk in cool room downstairs but a simple side door freezer on my fridge so it is a trade off, nothing is perfect Roz
Roz, that’s very cool (no pun intended)! I don’t think we could ever justify sacrificing space for a cool room, but it’s nice to dream.. :)
How cool is a cool room? I’ve just upgraded to a heat pump and it puts out lots of cold air. I’m thinking about how I can use that cold air. Apparently if you put a hot water heat pump in a garage it will get the room down to one degree. Mine is not in the garage but I could funnel that air to a place under the house. I guess it would take a bit of insulating. I’m thinking in the future we won’t have free standing refrigerators, rather an area of the home with a hot water heatpump attached to a refrigeration area/cavity/room. I find refrigerators and freezers rather ugly.
How about stocks? I freeze larger quantities in ziploc bags and smaller quantities in ice cube trays.
I also freeze stock makings–bones and vegetable parings (in separate bags) for my next stock-making session.
Homemade bread crumbs.
Crumble topping–when I am making a crumble I generally make a double or triple batch of topping and freeze what I don’t use. It keeps for ages and it’s easy to scoop out as many handfuls as you need for whatever size crumble you’re making.
Egg whites–I usually try to freeze these in ice cube trays so I can take out as many as I need to make a pavlova etc.
Thanks for all the great ideas in your post! Bookmarking it–a chest freezer is high on my wish list for the day when I acquire more permanent accommodation.
Nancy, I freeze stock too, and the crumble topping is a great idea! I do have little bags with eggwhites in them which keep appearing from time to time in the freezer – need to find a better way to store them – they keep getting lost! :)
We buy yeast in bulk and freeze it. That way I only have to buy yeast every couple of years (and pay wayyyy less).
I haven’t had much luck with freezing fruit for long – it always gets freezer burned. I’d be interested in how you wrap it up.
PS I’m doing a cook-along now on Wednesday’s .. if you’re interested I wrote all about it yesterday on my blog. I won’t put a link here because I don’t want to be spammy. :)
Sasha, yeast is the one thing I haven’t had luck with! Both regular fresh yeast and sourdough starter seem to die on me when frozen – are you talking about instant yeast?
Most of our fruit is vacuum sealed in thick plastic before freezing, and it keeps really well – we invested in a machine a couple of years ago and it has paid for itself many times over. As I mentioned, mostly stonefruit and berries now – we used to freeze apples, but that was a palaver – you have to dip the peeled slices in Vitamin C to keep them browning etc.
Thank you for your courtesy re not putting a link in – if anyone’s interested in the cook along, please have a look at Sasha’s post here!
Cheers, Celia
Yes, I have a bag of instant yeast. I’ll make a poolish with that or just use as is. I don’t have much experience with fresh yeast, though.
I’ve thought about getting a sealer, but my house is so small… tempting… tempting :)
Oh if only I had a bigger freezer. We have a small upright and the small freezer on top of our fridges. They are always full. We freeze excess vegies that we have grown. Some need to be blanched then frozen, others can be frozen as is. We always have surplus zucchini, this keeps for a long time if sliced, dried then frozen. Some herbs like basil also keep quite well if dried then frozen.
Like you, sauces and pesto also get frozen along with bread and other baked goods. Even simple things like pizza sauce are great to freeze. We are having pizza tonight. There is always more sauce than we can use in one night so the rest goes in the freezer for another night.
Bec, thank you – we’re trying to grow zucchini this year, good to know we can freeze any excess (and from what I’ve been told, there’s always excess zucchini! :)).
Do you keep lists of what is where in these enormous freezers you all have? I find I lose stuff in mine and forget about it and I hate delving into it and my fingers always get sore. Practical tips on freezer management required also! I have three drawers of freezer in the kitchen, one drawer taken up with dogs’ chicken, we buy whole ones, strip them completely and weigh out and box for the dogs, plus home made dog treats etc. And then the other drawers have an assortment of bought frozen veg, never grown enough to freeze, though I have once upon a time frozen apple slices when we had too many to deal with. Loads of home made bread, ends of stews and chicken jelly from the aforementioned chickens. Crusts of good old bread for using in new bread, parmesan rinds, ice cubes, bits of hedgerow fruits destined for unknown Pam Corbin delights, sausages, tubs of home made soup. Rarely make biscuits so no cookie dough, some frozen herbs, though I find they lose most of their taste, particularly dill. Butter. Crumble mix when there is some left over, egg whites long forgotten, how long should you keep them for in the freezer? Sounds a bit chaotic doesn’t it? Ho hum, I don’t think I am up to speed with you all on this….
I have a pretty good memory, so don’t lose too much apart from the occasional egg white. Although I have learnt not to freeze anything in too small a package, as they fall through the grill of the shelves, never to be seen again! My only practical tip is to get an upright freezer rather than a top opening one – apparently you could lose whole carcasses in those! :)
Our very old freezer, bought for $100 secondhand from a friend over 15 years ago, still works, but doesn’t cool as low as it used to. It’s a dedicated flour/nuts/legumes freezer and is not terribly big. But it means we never get weevils in our flour! I seal everything into large plastic bags and pull out one whenever it’s needed.
The newer freezer carries everything else, and each shelf has a category – one shelf for breaded products (a la Talky Toaster from Red Dwarf :)), one for passata, one for berries and fruits, one for meat, and three others for miscellany!
The best idea I’ve heard yet for managing what’s in your freezer (which I’ll be implementing shortly) is a small whiteboard stuck on the outside. Put something in, write it down + date. Take something out, wipe it off. I used to have a paper list on mine, but the whiteboard sounds much more efficient!
Nancy, I wonder whether or not you need a whiteboard? I reckon you could just write on the white enamel of the freezer with whiteboard marker! :)
This post makes me happy. A stand alone freezer is one of the first purchases I want to make when I go back to school. It makes life so much easier!
I had exactly the same disappearing egg white problem so now I have a special bag to put them in!Not sure how long they last either but have always managed to make a decent pav with them.
Bethany, I don’t think we could survive without ours!
Anna, how do you store them? Do you store them singly or in batches and then put them in the bag? I actually don’t freeze them as often any more, especially since the boys developed a hankering for meringues…
I put the to be frozen egg whites in a tiny plastic bag and knot it. Then they all go in a bigger zip lock bag which is kept in the second drawer on the right side!
My mum swears by hers too! For as long as I can remember we’ve had a huge one the size of a fridge. I only wish we had room for one! :P
I go to my local bakery and get a twenty kilo flour bag of day old bread and bread rolls for $2 and turn it all into bread crumbs for my freezer! Much nicer than that dry stuff you get at the supermarket, and such a bargain.
Lorraine, they really do make such a difference!
Erica, that’s very clever! Not only do you get bargain priced breadcrumbs, but you also save a big sack of perfectly good bread from the rubbish!
I love all these comments. Makes me feel I am not crazy when friends refer to me as the ‘freezer lady’. I love freezing things. One thing I freeze which is not homemade, however saves on waste is crackers or plain biscuits. If I buy a packet we never eat them all so I freeze them for later. They stay very fresh.
Chris, that’s a new one to me, thank you! So you freeze open packets of water crackers and the like? Good idea. It’s about the only packaged baked goods we buy too…
The first thing we did when we moved over was buy a super large (open-from-the-top) deep freezer.
I have plastic boxes to separate my Nigerian flours and herbs/spices, which we brought over. Like you, my passata goes in as do large quantities of stock and meat/fish. I also have a stash of frozen pastry – Filo from my Turkish shop and puff pastry. Plus lebanese pitas/lavash and tortillas.
What else? Butter and lots of cooked foods. As a working mom, I couldn’t live without it!
Ah…I am like Joanna…if it goes into the freezer it gets totally forgotten and lost. I sometimes put leftovers in a single meal sized container thinking that I would take into work for lunch in a week or two when it no longer feels like a left over (not big on eating leftovers in our house)…but then I forget, find it months later and end up ditching it anyway! The last time I made some super wicked chocolate brownies I cut some up and froze them. Now it has become a really bad habit to get one of those frozen brownies out every night after dinner. I am not sure if it is a good thing that I am eating just one brownie, or a bad thing that I am eating them everyday. Hmm…one big gluttonous splurge when I have made them vs a daily habit. If I had a shelf full of that stuff like you do Celia, I would be as big as that freezer myself!!
Frozen berries and mangoes (frozen when in season) work well for us as Sam loves eating a bowl of them with some natural yogurt. Cookie dough is also a success as I always make a double batch and freeze one half – great to make ‘instant’ home made biscuits when unexpected visitors arrive. I have been storing the flour I have now been buying in 25kilo lots in smaller bags in the freezer which has been great. Other than those things, everything else like meat, fish, etc goes in and only comes out once a year when we do a freezer clean out…and then it goes to the dog or the bin. Very wasteful I know, but I now freeze less knowing that it is just not in my psyche to remember (or I suspect, want) to use it.
Oz, I freeze a lot of meringues (which I know we both love) and pull them out to crumble over icecream or layer into a trifle. I’m sure you could freeze wonky macs as well.. :)
Spice Girl, you constantly crack me up. Surely a small cookie or brownie every day is better than a single gluttonous splurge? :)
every fall my mom made this bell pepper paste. i haven’t made it in the past couple years because you can get everything fresh now, but it think this fall i will. so this paste, it’s raw. you just put bell peppers, onion, garlic and parsley through the grinder, load it up in ziploc bags, and freeze. in the winter, you slice it into stews and soups. you really can taste the difference between a veggie ripe in your garden, and one you buy at the market in november…
eggplants. i know you like baba ganoush. i always roast/grill in large quantity, peel and chop, and freeze in ziploc bags. makes for a very fast snack, you just mix in your tahini and the rest. the romanian way is just mayo, minced onion and garlic and a splash of olive oil. served with feta and tomatoes. one of my favorite dishes.
Dana, I’ll look forward to seeing that recipe! I recently watched a food programme where an old Italian family used a similar paste to season their homemade salami. And good to know you can freeze baba ganoush, thank you! Can you actually freeze it complete, or do you need to add the tahini etc after it’s defrosted? Thanks…
you add everything after it’s defrosted. thaw it in the fridge overnight, and in the morning add whatever the recipe calls for. i’m just done peeling my charred eggplants. i’ll leave them in a colander in the sink until the morning, they have so much juice! then i’ll chop them, by hand if i can muster the patience, put them in bags and in the freezer. sometime i’ll chop them in the food processor – the trouble is no matter how short your pulses are the blades are going to cut through the seeds, and it gives the whole thing a bitter tinge. nothing bad, but something i’d rather do without. so i’ll take the time to chop with the dull side of a knife. back in romania i had a special wooden cleaver. done by hand, after being charred on the grill, they’re almost sweet. i don;t know exactly how to explain it – the flavor is pure, you can really taste it without the bitter split seeds. and if they’re cooked correctly, the fibers won’t come off in long strands, they’ll be easily minced.
Thanks Dana! That makes sense about the bitterness, although I always thought it was from the juice…will have to give this a try, I loooove baba ganoush.. :)
Celia
Have just found your blog and love it – especially the frugal living section :)
Seeing as you’re in Oz, which is in the same latitude as South Africa, have you considered making your passata, etc in a solar oven – you can’t get more frugal than that LOL And, because it doesn’t “boil away” via the steam, the flavour is more intense. I do everything in it – be that roasting a chicken (or leg of lamb for RMan), simmering stews until they are fall of the bone tender, cooking vegetables, making soup, baking bread / cakes / Christmas cakes / biscuits, even preserving / making jams – anything that is made on a normal stove / in a normal oven, can, in most cases, be cooked in a solar oven. To encourage people to use their solar ovens, I have just written my first (basic) solar recipe (e)book.
We are in the process of (at the ripe old age of our middle 50’s) relocating to an off-grid farm, using LP gas and an instant hot geyser for our hot water requirements, and where our only power is being produced via 300 watts of solar panels. That power is for LED lights, a 12 volt car radio (as a hi-fi) and, naturally, a freezer. Only a freezer. A fridge will be provided by the freezer producing containers of ice which will then chill a cooler box sufficiently to keep things like cream, salads, vegetables, eggs cold enough so that in the heat of our summers they won’t turn. And naturally, the freezer will be used to keep RMan’s beers cold enough.
For other power requirements (power tools, washing machine, etc. we have a 6.5 KvA generator, which is generally run once a week. Ironing – don’t do it – or more precisely I only do the very barest minimum (RMan’s shirts being the only thing LOL) If the damp clothes are shaken and “snapped” straight prior to hanging on the line, invariably they don’t need ironing.
For winter cooking, the solar oven also comes into play, but for those cold / wet days I have a small LP gas 2 plate) stove (with a small oven which chews gas and I therefore never use it), and a Dover (wood burning) stove. The Dover stove is two functional – not only does it keep the kettle boiling all day long, but it also warms the house.
We’ve decided that the only way we can show our children / grandchild that one can make a difference, is to live it – with no change to our standard of living. They are embracing the lesson and are even becoming advocates of the lifestyle to their urban peers.
When a child (no matter how old) listens, and takes the lesson on board, that always warms a parent’s heart :)
Take care
Dani
Dani, what a great comment, thank you! I’m so impressed that you’ve managed to make the transition so well, and I’m glad it’s made a difference to your children. I’ll check out the solar oven, thank you. You might be interested in my friend Linda’s blog as well – she’s pretty much living “off the grid” as well.