Empty the Freezer Challenge 2017: Week 2

We’re into the second week of the Empty the Freezer Challenge, where I’m trying to use up all our oldest frozen foods while they’re still edible. Some of it’s been hanging around for a while, and it’d be good to clear some space for all the fruit and vegetables we’ve been growing in our kitchen garden.

There hasn’t been as much progress this week because we went out more in the evenings, and we’ve been having the downstairs floors levelled and the flooring replaced. This job was long, long overdue so there’s been some general chaos and a feeling of being tired and drained and not wanting to cook so many meals from scratch. Still, we persevered and have managed to keep going with the freezer project, plus with all the work going on it’s proven to be a very good time to cut back on the general spending as well.

The first meal was bangers and mash with garden vegetables and onion gravy. That used up four of the veggie sausages, and it was very welcome on a cold, rainy evening after the windows had been open all day and our little house was freezing. The second meal was fish fingers, chips, peas and sweetcorn, using up eight more fish fingers and the last of the peas. It felt very weird having that as adults, but it was kind of comfort food to and was okay with some ketchup.

The third thing we had was some fried egg sandwiches, which used up two more of the sesame seed burger buns for a very quick lunch. I had one of the English muffins with homemade jam for one of my breakfasts too, and again forgot to take photos. The last thing I made using frozen food was a couple of bowls of cherry porridge with almond and cocoa to use up the last of the frozen cherries – that was a good start to our Sunday and it tasted fantastic.

Hopefully things will be back to normal for the following week, and I’ll be able to get back to meal planning as usual to try to keep the Empty the Freezer Challenge rolling along. I promise to make more challenge meals this week. It’s time to get back to making breakfast smoothies for starters, and I’d better make a start on that enormous bag of frozen rhubarb as well. If it keeps raining, it’s rhubarb crumble and custard time, and that’s that.

Are you trying to use up any of your old frozen food stocks too? What’s the oldest thing you have lurking at the back of your freezer?