For garlic, I shake off the dirt and throw all the garlic into a plastic container with a screw on lid. When I use it, I take out as many as needed and clean off the skins, chop, saute or whatever. Tomatoes are the easiest, I don't blanch mine. I wash them, pop off the stem and freeze them whole in freezer zip lock bags. Then I can take as many individual tomatoes out as needed and the skin peels off very easy. If I want the goodness of the skins, I blend everything up in a blender. You can pop whole frozen tomatoes into soup, the skins usually comes to the top so you can remove it. Strawberry/Rhubarb sauce is cooked rhubarb sweetened with stevia and add a package of strawberry jello while cooking. I use the sugar free kind, you can also put in a package of strawberry kool-aid. Brown rice, do you have a local food co-op? That's a good place to start looking. As far as sharing recipe and cooking ideas, I'm glad to do it. I've been around the block a few times more than you all, but I'm never too old to learn new tricks. That trick with running cold water over the rice is wonderful.
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For example, how do you freeze garlic? Do you do something fancy with it? And dried beans....you cook them and just put them into individual servings? That sounds like a great idea. Strawberry/rhubarb sauce...how do you make it? How do you freeze tomatos? Does anyone know where to buy brown rice in bulk? We go through a lot of brown rice!
Lasagna rolls... used up some frozen mild italian sausage, half a jar of pasta sauce, ricotta cheese that was sitting in my refrigerator (unopened) for a month or so, and half a box of lasagna noodles. I did have to buy the mozzarella, but I already had all the seasonings and parmesan cheese. I always make lasagna rolls instead of a "real" lasagna, because they're easier to cut/serve, and don't really take any longer to make.
A ham/egg strata... used up some of the stale hot dog rolls from the bakery that I had frozen (that's right, I'm too cheap to even part with STALE bread, lol), eggs (why did I buy so many eggs?!?), and ham that was frozen. Other than that, all I used was half an onion, milk, cheddar cheese, and salt/pepper/parsley. Would be a yummy breakfast for a special occasion (it's not terribly healthy) but we ate it for dinner.
While the strata was cooking, I also roasted some chicken leg quarters, so that I'll have pre-cooked chicken meat for other meals this week. I was proud of myself for conserving energy by only using the oven once for two things! I don't usually plan ahead that well.
I have yet to decide on dinner tonight, but it will probably use some of that cooked chicken. Tomorrow I'm making chicken stock in the crock pot from the big bag of chicken bones and scraps, carrot peelings, onion ends/skins and other veggie scraps in my freezer. From now until we move, I'll probably just throw out my scraps, if I can stand doing it.
Howdy! I didn't use anything old or frozen over the week-end. The Elk roast I made last week was huge and we're only two people so we get 3 or 4 meals out of it. We'll use the last of it tonight. I just wanted to comment on homemade chicken stock, I always throw the bones, scrap veggies and all the skin in when I make it. The fat gives it a lot more flavor and after refrigerating the cooked broth overnight, the fat rises to the top and gets hard for easy removal. If you take a paper towel and lay it on top of the jelled broth after removing all the hardened chicken fat, you can get the last traces of fat off. I'd say you end up with 99.9% fat free broth.
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I have yet to decide on dinner tonight, but it will probably use some of that cooked chicken. Tomorrow I'm making chicken stock in the crock pot from the big bag of chicken bones and scraps, carrot peelings, onion ends/skins and other veggie scraps in my freezer.
Oooh, that paper towel trick sounds great, I'll definitely do that this time. I just started making my own stock so I've only done it twice before, and both times I ended up with little bits of fat left on top, and I had to decide whether I'd rather try to scoop it off (and probably lose some stock with it) or leave it.
I ended up using that frozen hamburger (from 2006, so I'll check my pulse after eating it tonight) as a taco filling, which I'll have on a taco salad tonight. No shell, of course.
I also made gazpacho, which helped use up a small can of V8 juice that I had lying around from another recipe. (I got a marked-down tomatoes & cukes package at grocery store that had to be used immediately as the tomatoes were softening.)
We live out in the country on an acreage and have 6 Sweet Orpington laying hens so every once in awhile we have eggs and bacon for supper. That's what we had tonight, thick pepper bacon for DH and I had lean turkey bacon. That's like eating cardboard but it taste bacony. When I buy pepper bacon for hubby, I opened it up, divide it up into 3 strip packs and freeze it. So I used up some frozen bacon and some bread out of the freezer. I still need to work on last summers odd items like frozen grape juice (we have 4 different grape vines)apple juice, I saw an old package of French Fries in there. I don't remember buying them, they are probably full of ice crystals. Maybe I'll open them up tomorrow and see if there're edible. Have a good night
I can't believe we still had leftover elk roast, we've had 3 or 4 meals out of it already. Today I used the last of it in homemade vegetable/Elk soup. That made enough for tonight and tomorrow. I'm getting tired of it! I used some frozen red and green peppers from last summers garden and also found some frozen yellow string beans from 2007. I was going to throw them out but they were sealed in a vacumn pack. (I have a Food Saver). I thawed them out and tasted them, perfect! So I added them to the soup and used some dehydrated garden tomatoes that I put up a couple of years ago. Tomatoes keep for years once you dry them. So I'm proud that I used up 3 old items.
Today's meal was not very weight-loss friendly... but it used SO MUCH that I want to share it anyway. Hubby and I are lifelong Northerners so it's fun to have "Southern food night" once in a while.
I made Ham & Beans which used about half of my latest batch of chicken stock, a pound of dried beans (I used pinto), almost 1.5 pounds of frozen ham (WAY more than the recipe calls for but I NEED to use this stuff!) and I added some chopped kale stems and half a bell pepper. It's not terribly unhealthy, it's just... a lot of ham.
To go with that, I made a cornbread casserole. I used lowfat plain yogurt instead of sour cream. I had planned to make this a while ago but didn't get around to it, so I had the cornbread mix and cans of corn sitting in the cupboard. Glad they're finally gone. And, of course, I used more eggs!
The only foods I cleaned out today was 1/2 bag of frozen Soy Edamame that I purchased. Yuk! I was told they were delicious eaten raw. I'm thawing them out in the frig today and DH will feed them to the chickens in the morning. What's everyone else been using up?
My silence on this thread does not mean that eating hamburger purchased & frozen in 2006 prostrated me. It means that I was eating the same thing several nights in a row. Us single ladies do that sometimes. (Well, a lot.) The hamburger was kind of dry but all the seasonings helped.
Now I'm thawing some of those chicken leg quarters that I can't seem to stop buying. Finally, I'm getting around to the carrot juice recipe. I'll have to check it again but basically I'm boiling it down into a reduction sauce, more or less.
I'm also going to make a quinoa & black bean salad, as the warm weather's here & these cold salads make great lunches. I tend to stare at unopened boxes of quinoa because of the rinsing thing. Which is a pain. I have acquired a very fine-mesh sieve, though, and that may help me here.
Meat still to be eaten in my freezer: More hamburger, turkey andouille sausage, lots of shrimp, a couple Boca black bean burgers, more chicken, fish broth, hummus, edamame (Bobbi's experience makes me wonder -- but I get it at the salad bar at our office cafeteria & it's good), and more -- that's just the first layer toward the front of the top shelf. This challenge has been very good for my freezer. I can see the back wall for a change.
Good Morning! I was a good girl over the 4th, had two bites of the bottom of a cinnamon roll. I dropped a couple of pounds too. Two days ago I found a new meat marinade using fresh garden herbs among other things. We marinaded some Elk steaks in it and had them last night, oh so flavorful. I finally got around to using up 1/2 bag of those frozen french fries for DH. They were full of ice crystals but I baked them anyway and DH said they were delicious. I ate one only and the ice crystals on them didn't affect the taste or texture at all. WOW, You should see my freezer, it's really getting bare, how about the rest of you? Pantry, old beans, freezer?
Yes, Bobbi, my freezer is definitely getting roomy. I'm fighting my instinct, which is to fill it back up again.
No closing date set yet, which is annoying. The bank is still clearing my file, they told me when I called yesterday. I don't want to start buying & freezing till this fridge is empty & till I am moved into my new apartment.
I made the chicken in a reduction of carrot sauce, and this turned out quite well. I'll be eating that for several nights.
I'm thinking of using the edamame in a bean salad. (I have two frozen packages.) Maybe a healthy, three-bean salad, which would help me use up some cans of cannellinis or chickpeas or kidney beans.
Hubby and I are lifelong Northerners so it's fun to have "Southern food night" once in a while.
