Stalking the freezer

Of course I mean ‘stocking’, but I just couldn’t resist the quasi-homonym. :wink:

I’ve been meat-shopping. We like a particular brand of bacon, and I get it from Cash & Carry in five-pound packages. We each have two rashers on Saturdays, and often another two on Sundays. I used to put 2½ pounds each into two 1-gallon zip-top bags. There were two problems with this: First, it didn’t fit very well. Second, by the time we got through it, the bacon was getting a little old in the fridge. So my new technique is to lay out a sheet of cling film. I lay four rashers along the long edge and roll once. Another four go on top of the first, separated by some plastic. Roll and make a third layer. Bring up the other long edge to seal, and fold over the ends. Now we have three Saturdays’ worth of bacon (or less, if we have bacon on Sunday) in the fridge that doesn’t ‘get old’ and is already portioned. The rest of the five-pound package is done the same way and put into the freezer. We now have eight packets of three portions of bacon in total.

Cash & Carry also had some andouille sausages. I hope they’re good, because they came 20 to a package. Those are in five 1-quart zip-top bags in the freezer.

The local supermarket has fair deals on chicken. So now the freezer contains a dozen boneless, skinless chicken thighs, individually wrapped in a fold-top bag, and then put into two 1-quart bags and one ‘sandwich-size’ zip-top bag.

I buy ground beef five or six pounds at a time. I weigh out exactly one pound, wrap the portions in fold-top bags, and package them into a 1-gallon zip-top bag for freezer storage. There’s still two pounds left in there though, so I didn’t buy any beef.

This last month we have been specifically organizing menus to eat down the freezer. Once it is fairly empty Costco gets scheduled, along with an order to Nueske’s.

We do the same thing with hamburger and chicken thighs. Always in the freezer and always useful.

I have also noticed that the local Vons has started carrying hot and mild Italian sausage in one pound packages, bulk. Which makes it so much easier to use with pasta.