Making Room in the Freezer

All Blogs need to begin somewhere. This one starts as a tale of two freezers - the one atop my refrigerator and the small one in the basement...

In June of 2013 I was having lunch at the Starlight Theatre and Cafe in Nantucket. They served what was nothing less than the best turkey sandwich I ever had. At that time I decided that as soon as I got home I was going to begin cleaning out my freezer and buy a turkey breast. I would then brine it and bake it and it would be delicious. Then I would perfect my bread recipe - which after 15 years is nowhere near perfect - and create the best bread to go with that.

It's now January of 2016 and I haven't even got past the point of defragging my freezer(s). So part of the reason that I started this blog is to embarrass myself into compliance.

Now there are some very good items in my freezer that should be there. The cans of orange juice concentrate should be there. The can of Old Bay should not. I hate Old Bay. But there I was one day, knowing full well that I didn't like Old Bay as I threw it into my shopping basket. I was making crab cakes and thought that maybe in the five years since I last had Old Bay I would have acquired a taste for it. Nope.

I also have four pounds of fresh ground turkey that I ground myself. It's an excellent food but it's in freezer #2, the small one in the basement and I keep forgetting what's in it. Then there's a package that has three chicken strips in it, a box with one Angus burger, about two dozen delicious meatballs that I made last month, and so on. The food is all good - and if it gets freezer burn I toss it - I just do a terrible job of managing my inventory. I hope to change that. This is my plan:

1. Until I get this under control buy only what I need. What this means is that if I need a half-pound of sausage for my Sausage, Shrimp and Quinoa recipe that I don't buy a one pound package and freeze the unused portion. It means that I go to the deli counter and buy 1/2 pound, period.

2. Don't overstock on sale items. It never fails. The frozen veggies go on sale and I buy 8 packages. I'm so smart. And by the time I've used three of them they're on sale again.

3. Plan on using freezer items at the start of the week. On Monday through Friday I usually get home after 6pm and so the meals are quick and simple - leftovers, sandwiches, pasta, Chipotle take-out, etc. On weekends I can spend more time in the kitchen. Regardless, I will try to use at least one freezer item every two days, more if possible.

4. Post a picture every two weeks. The intent is avoid visual evidence of personal failure. BTW if you think that the pictures don't look too bad - two things. (1) I put this project into high gear about three weeks ago and just now took the pictures and (2) trust me, it looks worse in 3-D.

My schedule is as follows: By April 1 the freezer should look much different and by June 1 I will have achieved my goal. Now if 4.5 months seems like a long time just remember that I've been at this for 2.5 years. In the time between now and then I will post other food-related stories.

And in June I will cook up that turkey breast - with homemade bread - and report on it.

Update - Feb 7, 2016

It looks like I lost some ground, especially upstairs. I took some baby back rib meat out of the freezer to use in a sauce. That's good. Then I put four containers of sauce in the freezer. That and some unauthorized frozen food purchases and here we are.
And so it goes.

Update - Oct 1, 2017

After trying and failing I developed a new strategy - it was to play a game that I called, "Hurricane." For every meal I pretended that the stores were closed and I had to prepare meals from something in the freezer. Did it work? See the captions under the pictures. I am not a proud boy!

Upstairs Freezer - Jan 10, 2016

Upstairs Freezer - Jan 24, 2016

Upstairs Freezer - Feb 7, 2016

Upstairs Freezer - Mar 20, 2016

Upstairs Freezer - Oct 1, 2017. I'm a loser. Couldn't do it. Had to buy more than I needed. It's actually worse that it looks. There are maybe 20-25 items in here that you don't see. Tiny packages of food - a sausage link, a few ounces of pulled pork, even a small amount of almond flour - that found its way into the freezer and worked it's way to the back.

Downstairs Freezer - Jan 10, 2016

Downstairs Freezer - Jan 24, 2016

Downstairs Freezer - Feb 7, 2016

Downstairs Freezer - Mar 20, 2016

Downstairs Freezer - Oct 1, 2017 - Total Failure. After kidding myself for almost 2 years that I was capable of clearing out the freezer I was wrong. Maybe public humiliation is what I needed. I will try one more time, dammit. Check back in four months.