I cook a lot and I cook often, but I don’t like cooking mini meals. Meals for just one person all the time, especially with products like potatoes or beans, that take a pretty long time to cook. So I like to make pretty big bulk sized food, and then freeze them for use on a later date.
There is a method that you can use, called Blanching, that is meant to keep the vegetables or fruit at peak perfection when you freeze them… I don’t do that. Too much time and effort, just to freeze something I am going to use in the next few days or weeks in a pasta sauce or a soup. Blanching is supposed to keep the frozen food crisp even after thawing. I am more of a crockpot kinda girl, so I don’t need it.
Right now, I am making about 3 servings of Lentils. I am going to take those, split them up, and freeze two of the servings and add the other to the fridge for later. I almost never cook when I am actually hungry. Which is odd, because I have basically no snack-foods in my house. Fruit is my go-to snack food, and I didn’t buy any this time. So my snack foods are now going to be potatoes, lentils, etc.
Some of the other foods you can freeze are:
- Bread, bagels, anything like that
- Juice
- Cooked potatoes
- Cooked beans
- Meat
- Rice
- Raw cracked Eggs
You CANNOT really freeze Pasta, Dairy, Cooked Eggs, Almond milk, and some others.
I have been able to have a stockpile of rice in my freezer that I get from my job because it is foodwaste. I have like, 4 several pound bags in there right now, and it makes me happy that no matter what, I have rice to eat.
So definitely, if you can’t eat it before it goes bad, consider freezing it. You will save up to hundreds of dollars on food waste every year simply by doing this.
Frugal Lucy 