Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Tackle It Tuesday - My Chest Freezer

Tackle It Tuesday Meme

First of all, I just want to say, the next time I buy a freezer it will be an upright freezer. The chest freezer is just too hard to find things and keep things organized. With that said, my chest freezer was calling for a clean out. Most of the time it takes several attempts of stuffing, moving and pushing to get my freezer closed properly. Also, I needed to take an inventory of what I had and didn't have.

I forgot to take before and after pictures of the freezer but here is how I organized everything into groups, so I could organize it back into my freezer.

Veggies:



Frozen Sausage:


Lunch Meat & Hot Dogs:


Cornish Hens:



Awhile back I was asking some friends about freezing meat. (you can read about that here: How do you freeze your meat? ) I buy so much meat and sometimes it's frozen for 4 or 5 months before I get to use it and sometimes it would have freezer burn. One of the problems was when I did buy meat, I would just throw it in the freezer. I thought there has to be a better way. I got some really good tips, one of them being a great suggestion about before you freeze your meat, marinate it in your food saver bag, mark it with a sharpie and then freeze it. This also gets rid of extra packaging, protects it from freezer burn and saves room. More room is what I needed! I wanted to do this, but I had to force myself to use up my old meat I already had, first. So for the past several months, any new meat I buy, I marinade, food saver, mark and freeze and forget about it until my old meat is gone.

Here is all my new marinaded salmon, pork and beef. I have each one dated and marked what kind of meat it is.
Some more meat - I didn't food saver these cause I figured they were already vacuumed packed.


I still have about 10 packages of 'old meat' to use before I can start using my 'new meats'. I placed all those on top so I could easily find them and get them used up in the next couple weeks. I forgot to take before and after pics of freezer - but take my word for it - it looks much nicer and hopefully easier to find things now.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would love to get another freezer so I could do some stockpiling and Once A Month Cooking. Maybe one day...

Great tackle!

Minkydo said...

Great idea. I need to do my 2 chest freezers. They aren't huge, but it's a bugger to figure out what's in there.

GOOD JOB!

Smarty Pants Mama said...

AWESOME TACKLE!!!!
So I'm guessing you but lots of one item when it's one sale!!! Someone must really like Sausage and Gravy!
I tried marinating and vacumn sealing last week and the machine tried to suck up the juice. What am I doing wrong??
Caroline
SmartyPantsMama.blogspot.com

One Mom, Five Kids said...

Smarty Pants Mama -

Yes, when it's on sale and a good deal - I buy it. I had actually gotten all the sausage gravy free. I love it with biscuits or over toast. The only problem is the packages are so small it takes 4 or 5 of them to feed my family. But they make for a quick, hot breakfast.

As far as the marinating and food saver - I have the same problem. I try not to fill the bag too full - but even then I get a little bit of a mess where the machine tries to suck out the juice. I just let it finish it's job - and after it has sealed - I just clean up the food saver with a sponge and run the sealed marinated meat under water to rinse it off.

I hope I answered your question.

Kelly @ Growing.Learning.Playing. said...

We need to get an upright freezer so badly. Great tackle!

The Apron Queen said...

You're making me hungry! :D

Great tackle. Been working in the sunflower garden myself. Come see!

For your daily dose of vintage goodness & a bit of silliness, stop by Confessions of an Apron Queen, the home of Vintage Thingies Thursdays.

stitchin' girl said...

Great tackle!! I need to do our freezer - we also have 5 kids so I have to buy food in bulk - I am going to try your idea of marinating and sealing the meats to keep off the freezer burn. Thanks for the tip!

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad you didn't fall in!

 
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