I’m on day four of eating dinner out of my freezer and pantry. (Lunch is another matter.) At first I was too lazy to buy groceries. Now it’s a game to see how many days I can slink out of grocery shopping and fend off the take out food delivery guy. I never liked him anyway.
Saturday I made my hearty spaghetti recipe, substituting sausages for ground turkey and frozen chopped peppers for diced carrots. Hubby barely noticed the difference.
Sunday I heated up a few scoops of the spaghetti sauce and ate it over toasted bread rolls that were camping out in my freezer. Leftover from Thanksgiving? I can’t be sure.
Monday I scrambled…… two eggs, nuked leftover refried beans and ate them with salsa on two tortillas.
Tuesday I made a southwest chicken dish with black beans, canned corn and diced tomatoes, above. Served it over rice but forgot to add the lime juice. Fresh cilantro would have been nice too. But tasty anyway and enough leftovers for tomorrow.
I want to continue my experiment but have friends coming to town Friday. It seems unfair to push my “creative” recipes on them. Plus, Albertsons is having a great sale Thursday.
If you had to eat out of your fridge/freezer/pantry how many days would you last? How do you cook from what is left?
Welcome to Bargain Babe! I’m Mara, and I’m so glad you’re here. I am an obsessive bargain hunter and penny pincher, and I am determined to live a full life without EVER paying full price.
Your recipes do sound very creative, props to you there. I think I could do this for 3-4 weeks, but I think in order to do this and I would need to use one fresh vegetable item, nothing to expensive, maybe a pound of napa cabbage or bok choy which I would never get at Ralphs or Vons EVER (unless on special). I always get my produce at Vallarta, or Food 4 Less.. prices are best there most of the time!
I agree. It would be difficult, though possible, to eat out of my freezer for some time. But the meals would be greatly improved by fresh vegetables from time to time. ~Julia
My husband calls our freezer my “food museum” so sadly, I must admit, we could probably survive a LONG time just eating what’s in the house. (And probably lose a lot of weight since there seem to be a ton of Lean Cuisines gathering frost in there!)
Your husband is hilarious – food museum! I love it!!! ~Julia
I just did an inventory of my large freezer. We have meat for about 44 meals, fruit, cereal, flour, ice cream, bread, cookies, and pretzels. There are a few servings of veg but we prefer fresh so I shop at Henry’s or Fresh & Easy. F&E has a nice section where items are half off. They are almost at the sell date so they discount them. Very cool. Anyway, we could make it about 7 weeks.
Julia, I shop once a month for meal preparation items, make 12 to 15 meals on a Saturday and put those meals (with directions on how to cook them) in the freezer. I write out our meals on the calendar and each family member makes a meal once a week, and cleans once or twice a week. I make sure that the meal is taken out to defrost and it avoids the “what’s for dinner?” questions I used to get. I did try meal preparation places but I can make the meals myself and spend half of the money they charge. So I probably have at least 30 days worth of meals in my freezer.
Wow, Renee. You are so organized! And you must have a very large freezer. It sounds like you have replicated the meal preparation business that are popping up, but for a lower cost. I like the idea for a family calender of meals – it reminds me of the pink sheet I received from my elementary school cafeteria.