Empty the Freezer Challenge 2017: Week 3
We’ve been using up as much of our old frozen food as we can this week, and making more of an effort with the Empty the Freezer Challenge. It’s business as usual back at the homestead so meal planning has been much easier.
The list of items I earmarked for the challenge has now started to dwindle, and it feels like quite a lot more progress has been made over the last eight days. The last update finished on a Sunday morning, so here’s what we’ve been cooking up since.
For a quick Sunday lunch, fitting in around the painting and polyfilla-ing, we had fish finger sandwiches and salad, getting rid of the last few fish fingers. In the evening we made a mini Sunday roast, using up some chicken for Beau and another Quorn fillet for me, along with roasted spuds and garden veggies. Beau also had fresh fruit and some of the frozen yogurt for a pudding but I felt too stuffed to eat any more at that point. And, er, forgot to take pictures of all of that, sorry.
There was a lot of fresh food to use up on Monday, but I did manage to use up the last English muffin with some cheese to accompany a lunchtime bowl of soup. The next proper freezer meal was on Tuesday. We had Tex-Mex with a black bean salad that used up the oven dried tomatoes and some more Quorn fillets, and cooking the fillets in a free sample sachet of Wahaca Achiote sauce that we were given at a recent event. It turned out really well and was very tasty indeed, with enough extra for a leftover lunch the next day. We had some mandarin oranges with the last of the frozen yogurt for a light dessert too.
On the Wednesday I made a really quick dish of pasta in spinach and mushroom sauce (pic below) to completely finish off the chopped spinach. It needed some garlic, nutmeg and cheese to make it really tasty, and we had that with home grown baby plum tomatoes and rocket on the side. Impossible to make a dish like that look pretty, but it was good, I promise.
I’ve been continuing to use up random handfuls of frozen fruit in breakfast smoothies, so that’s nearly all gone now, and the big bag of rhubarb got defrosted and turned into a crumble with some stem ginger and an oaty topping. Not exactly a traditional dish for high summer but still great.
The next main meal was a big bowl of bangers and mash with mixed garden veggies. Perfect TV dinner on an unseasonably cold and rainy evening, and it used up the last of the veggie sausages. Delicious. Finally we had a mini roast at the weekend which used up another Quorn fillet (I confess I’m getting a bit sick of them now, but they have been useful I suppose – probably need to take a break from them for a bit), and I also had the bellini popsicle from the freezer during a rare moment when the sun came out.
We’ve not needed to buy much extra food this week, and I’m enjoying keeping those grocery bills low, low, low. There are still a few things left to use up, but I think the end is in sight…
Do you have a load of old food in your freezer that could do with being used up? Are you joining in with this Empty the Freezer Challenge?
