Welcome To Day 8 Of The Empty The Freezer Challenge!
[Read Day 7 Of The Empty The Freezer Challenge Here]
Before we get into day 8, if you’re new to the challenge, I’m taking a little break from my regular postings in December to do a Challenge designed to help save money, simplify, and prepare for the new year:
The “Empty The Freezer Challenge”
What is it? The Empty The Freezer Challenge is my way of encouraging you to not only slow down this season, but save money and get creative! I would guess that most of you are like us: you have tons of food in your freezer which may or may not be edible, that you’ve either forgotten or aren’t super motivated to eat.
They may require some creative meal preparation or presentation, but they’re still good to eat!
Starting December 1st, I’ll by on a mission to use up everything in my freezer – that is still safe to eat. I don’t want to buy anything from the grocery store except for milk. We get eggs from friends who have chickens, so don’t think we’re avoiding using eggs – we’re not.
We may or may not get through all of the food in our THREE freezers, but we’re going to try! Then, on December 25th when we have family over I’ll finally be able to cook with new food from the grocery store!
What Will The Challenge Accomplish?
The Empty The Freezer Challenge have several purposes:
- It will encourage you to spend very little/no money on groceries during most of the month of December – a no-spend month of sorts, but without calling it that.
- It will get tons of food our of your freezer!
- And it will give you a blank slate for the new year – at least as far as your fridge/freezer are concerned
- As a bonus, your family will probably complain a lot less in 2016 when you make a creative or inexpensive meal!
Today, let’s talk about another strategy to simplify this process of cleansing – well, cleansing your freezer, that is!
Freezing Baked Goods
See, we recently came into bananas.
Like, 6 bunches of bananas, and while we all love eating them – especially Little Miss – but 6 bunches of bananas is kind of a lot for us to eat before they go bad, so I had to come up with creative ways to use and store them.
Sometimes, you’ll have weird ingredients, like my banana situation – that you need to turn into things your family will actually eat.
When that happens, I always suggest turning to baked goods. In the case of the bananas, I’m making banana bread tonight, which I’ll freezer and then thaw as needed, I also plan to take some of them out of their peels and freeze them for later baking, and if I get really ambitious I might even turn some of those bananas into healthy faux ice cream!
Usually, the baking trick applies to little leftovers of fruit, but the concept is sound.
Pick on ingredient at a time and find something to turn it into that everyone will like!
Breakfast – Eggs all around
After Workout Snack – Protein shake
Lunch – Little miss had 2 small bananas (she asked for them all the way home from the gym) and then wouldn’t eat anything else. I didn’t eat, because the post-workout protein shake really filled me up!
Dinner – The hubs was feeling sick, so I made homemade chicken noodle soup, hamburger helper for lunches tomorrow, baked some banana bread, and literally forgot to feed myself. So basically I had protein shakes all day. Oh well!
How is your journey to freezer freedom going?
Gretchen
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