I guess the older I get, the more practical I become. I would absolutely love to get a great deal on a freezer. I made one freezer meal, and it just about filled my freezer above the refrigerator. (with all of the other frozen foods in it) I would love to have a whole freezer full of meals before baby blessing #4 arrives, but at this point, I cannot do much without freezer space. I am a little leary of buying one used, as it is hard to tell if it would be in working condition and how much life would be left in it. I have been so inspired by Crystal's baking days, and would love to be able to make several meals, at once, to freeze. I would also love to have a freezer so that I could buy 1/4 a cow. Yes, never did I imagine that I would dream of owning a fourth of a cow. But, the more I read, the more I want healthy beef to serve to my family. (Reading Crunchy Cons made me want to only eat beef from a trusted farm.) One blessing of having plenty of room in your freezer, is that it makes hospitality even easier for busy mothers. When I have a bag chocked full of muffins, in the freezer, I can just grab a few out and heat them in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Make some tea or coffee and voila, hospitality is feasible without standing in the kitchen all afternoon. I usually plan my menus for two weeks at a time. Since Monday is traditionally pasta night, at our house, I love doubling the recipe. Last week, I made stuffed shells, and doubled the recipe. For tonight's meal, all I had to do was defrost the meal last night, and cook it for 1 hour. Doubling or tripling meals is the perfect solution for a busy mother.
Do you have an extra freezer? What have you found it useful for?
Monday, October 19, 2009
What I am Dreaming of....
Posted by Christine at 1:08 PM
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We have an extra freezer, and I love it! When we have leftovers that we don't want anymore, I stick those in there for the next month when we will want them. I love baking, so I double and triple quick bread recipes and store the extras in the freezer. I do this with muffins, too. I even buy bread and stick it in the freezer (my husband prefers store bought bread). I freeze fruits and vegetables when they are in season.
Nikki~
Since we started gardening around here, this past summer, I definitely could use a freezer for storing fruits and vegetables! I do have some sliced and shredded zucchini in my freezer, and would love to be able to start preserving even more, if I had an extra freezer.Do you thaw the bread in the fridge first? Blessings!
Unless we need the store bought bread immediately (because it's lunch time), I don't thaw it in the microwave because that tends to make it soggy. I try to get it out early enough to thaw before we need it.
With the quick breads, I do thaw those in the microwave. I like to leave them frozen and just slice off the pieces that we need. If I take the whole loaf out, I try to take it out early enough for it to thaw before we need it.
LOVELY...
I want one for my wedding
cakes that I like to make!!!
Love~ Jen
We bought a second fridge/freezer off craigslist almost 2 years ago for $150 or $120, can't remember now. It was almost new at the time and has worked great and never given us any trouble. I know what you mean about buying one used. I kind of just went by which listing seemed nice (i.e. a clean kitchen in the background as opposed to a messy garage and a sloppy photo), and also asked the people how old the fridge was, if they had any trouble with it, etc. Most people don't just brazenly lie about these things, and if they do, it's easy to tell. A lot of people also do not mind if you ask them to plug the freezer in ahead of time, to give you a chance to see if it works or not.
The fridge we bought is the type that has a fridge at the bottom and a freezer on top. I use this fridge as a "pantry", storing things that are refills for what we use on a daily basis. In the summer, a lot of stuff has to be refrigerated here that is not usually perishable, such as pasta, sugar, cereal, etc. The freezer holds everything except meat.
Our original fridge is a side-by-side fridge/freezer, and I store all the opened stuff that we use on a regular basis in the fridge part. The freezer half can fit a 1/4 cow, with room for other meat in the bottom bin and extra space in the door cubbies.
We started buying meat from a local rancher a few months ago, and have absolutely loved it. It's about twice as expensive as we used to pay for meat, so I am trying to stretch each portion into two days either by using less meat (this works well with anything that calls for ground beef - I double all ingredients except the meat) or by making something meatless every other day (bean burritos, chowders, vegetarian pasta dishes).
For church, we got a free fridge/freezer off craigslist that was a few years old and dirty inside, but other than that had no problems and works great. I see free fridges and freezers on craigslist and freecycle a lot - do you have either where you live? It might be worth a try.
Nope, I don't. But it's on my list. ESPECIALLY when we get our land, start gardening, and start "harvesting" animals!!
~Brandy
http://www.ladypilgrim.com
I freezer is def. only wish/prayer list. I'm kind of picky though. I really want a stand up freezer.
I can tell you what I do with our bread. I usually bake multiple loaves of bread at a time and freeze all but one loaf. When I get ready to thaw it I just thaw it on the cabinet. When I freeze other baked goods (muffins, rolls, etc), I let them thaw on the cabinet and then will heat them in a covered glass dish in the oven until warm and moist.
I freezer is def. only wish/prayer list. I'm kind of picky though. I really want a stand up freezer.
I can tell you what I do with our bread. I usually bake multiple loaves of bread at a time and freeze all but one loaf. When I get ready to thaw it I just thaw it on the cabinet. When I freeze other baked goods (muffins, rolls, etc), I let them thaw on the cabinet and then will heat them in a covered glass dish in the oven until warm and moist.
I want a freezer too! A small chest freezer is more in our price range, but ultimately I'd like an upright one (just for organization reasons). And we'd have to put it outside, which stinks, so we'd want a lock on it. We just have no room inside to put one! But I dream of having one too!!!
We have a stand-up freezer and I don't know what I'd do without it (for all the reasons you mentioned!) When we were in our apartment, I made very good use of the above-the-fridge freezer but was so excited to get a real freezer when we moved into our house.
We got a 20 cubic foot commercial upright freezer for $200 off of Craig's List. It was several years old but had only been in use about a year. It works great and is way better and bigger for much less than we would have been able to get new, even from the Sears Outlet. The seller plugged it in a few hours before we came so we cold see that it worked well and got nice and cold.
Before this freezer we had a smaller one (12cuft) packed to the gills. We'd gotten it for free and it wasn't the best freezer, but it worked well enough until we had the money for the current one. It also helped me see how much space would be ideal for our needs and made me realize that I really needed a frost-free freezer because I just never got it empty enough to be able to manually defrost.
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