Empty the Freezer Challenge 2018: Week 3

The heatwave in the UK continues, and we’re still trying to use up as much of our surplus frozen food as possible. Unfortunately the stash doesn’t include any icecream, lollies, sorbet or anything that would actually cool us down, so the last week has mostly been about finding ways to turn our Empty the Freezer Challenge food list into salads. Quite a challenge but we’re not scared of a bit of creative thinking here at Golightly Gardens.

Here’s what we’ve been cooking up:

Meal 1 (above) was a speedy supper of burgers, paprika potato wedges and sweetcorn salad. I finally manged to offload the two veggie burgers that have been lurking at the bottom of our freezer drawer for who knows how long. Mission accomplished. Not the most inspiring meal to take a photo of but it was nice and easy to eat in front of our favourite TV shows on catch up, and we washed it down with a refreshing cold beer.

For our second dinner (above) we made Chicken Caesar salads with herby potato croutons. This used up a portion of frozen chicken and a portion of frozen Quorn. Much less stodgy than a Sunday roast, and better suited to the warm weather.

Meal 3 was ‘Pork’ and beans wraps. This (see above) was made with four more of the frozen veggie sausages, the frozen grilled vegetables and the last of the freezer challenge flour tortillas. I added a little grated Gran Padano cheese, a can of kidney beans, smoked paprika, onion, red pepper, chilli relish, sliced fresh tomatoes with a big handful of home grown coriander, and some freshly chargrilled home grown courgettes. Most certainly not the prettiest burrito filling ever invented, granted, but it was very tasty and also a good healthy meal.

The fourth dinner was Spanish-style tortilla with peas and spring onions. This was the first meal to make a dent in the massive bag of frozen peas, and we also had some eggs and potatoes to use up that were fast approaching their best before dates. The spring onion and parsley gave the flavour a lift, and I served it with a chunky beetroot and caper salad on the side. There was enough of the tortilla for leftovers the next day too, which is always a bonus when you don’t feel like cooking during a heatwave.

Other freezer challenge meals and snacks: Two cinnamon pecan pastries for a weekend breakfast, a big batch of cherries in overnight oats with cocoa and vanilla, a smoothie with frozen blueberries, banana and natural coconut flavouring, and a raspberry no-added-sugar sorbet with most of the remaining raspberries.

While we’re still making inroads on our frozen overstocks, we did have to do a slightly bigger grocery shop at the weekend this time around because we were getting so low on many fresh and dried ingredients. That set us back £15.90 all in for the week which wasn’t too bad and included milk, cheese, yogurt, fresh fruit, a few veggies, falafel ingredients and toiletries.

There’s still so much frozen gubbins to use up, but I think we’ve made it past the half way point now. The warm weather shows no sign of going away any time in the near future, so we’ll have to get even more creative if we’re going to keep on emptying the freezer and beating the heat at the same time.

Are you trying to use up your surplus food stocks too? Share your pictures on social media and tag them with #EmptyTheFC so we can see how you’re getting on.