Magic multiplying food!

Pitlanepiglet

I have always mainly cooked from scratch but thanks to the OS board I've got much better at baking, bulk cooking and making "something out of nothing".

What has amazed me is how far food now goes and that's starting from a "no ready meal" point where I thought I was doing pretty well!

My freezer is now full of bulk cooked meals, soup, biscuits, cakes, quiche, etc and there is no room for any shopping....but in reality I don't need any more shopping as there is still loads to use up! It's kinda hard to get used to...I feel like I need to go and shop!

I treated myself to a new slow cooker yesterday and I'm desparate to use it but now I'm worried there is no freezer space and that's with two feeezers! The small pack of mince I take out of the freezer becomes a vast amount of chilli or whatever which I then have to find space for again!

So :T to all OS'ers for helping me to get to this point....but am I the only person who seems to find that food multiplies now!

RosyRed

Piglet,I know exactly what you mean,I am the same having a chest freezer in the garage and the fridge freezer in the kitchen,and they're full to busting with stuff I've cooked.Last week I thought I'd try and get the chest freezer down a bit,but I made the bread yesterday and put that in and now its full again!
When I use the slow cooker or the Remoska,there's usually enough left to freeze for another meal.Only thing is I'm not v good at labelling,so we often end up with a surprise.I need to get better about that!

floyd

heh heh I know exactly how you feel about no space for shopping!
OH bought quorn mince and a packet of spicy bean burgers and was complaing there was no room in the freezer to put them. This is because I spent all of yesterday cooking so it contains 20 portions of pasta sauce, 12 portions of soup, 16 portions of mashed sweet potato/white potato, 2 rhubarb and apple crumbles and various other tubs of salvaged roast chicken, mash for fish pie and odds and sods of stewed fruit.
I very rarely go foods shopping now as OH cooks during the week using the 'building blocks' I make at the weekend so he gets all the fresh veg etc and I do the large bulk buy shops once every 3 or 4 weeks when I am batch cooking.

We recemtly had to use up the entire contents of the freezer as we were getting a new fridge freezer and it took us 3 weeks to get through it all!

OS has worked wonders for my purse and my waistline (in the right direction) as I eat less processed junk. My doctor was previously concerned that my BP was 140/90 which is pretty bad for a 30 year old with no medical issues, I OH and I started OS and changed my diet and it is now 110/72. I still eat puddings and cakes when I want them but I know exactly what goes into my food now.

OS is my new addiction

Pitlanepiglet

RosyRed wrote: »

Only thing is I'm not v good at labelling,so we often end up with a surprise.I need to get better about that!

LOL!! Us too, we're having a bit of a "mystery meat" problem at the moment where I have little idea what I'm defrosting until it's defrosted!

Olliebeak

NO - same here!

I created loads of carrot and butter bean soup yesterday. Now all frozen for when we come back off holiday in 3 weeks. I know that the house will be freezing when we get back - having not been lived in for two weeks and it being late September.

I'll ask one of my sons to go in early in the day to take a container out of the freezer. It'll defrost and we can have soup and crusty bread when we arrive back home around 9.00pm after a 9 hour coach journey from Scotland .

I had just over a pound of carrots in the fridge drawer. Used some dried butterbeans that had been sitting in the cupboard for a while, red lentils, three small onions plus dried coriander, mixed herbs, celery salt for extra flavour and some home-made veg stock. Took around 20 mins in the pressure cooker and tasted delicious.

Every meal cooked results in two meals for two people plus extra for jacket potato toppings - all stashed and labelled in margarine tubs/old takeaway containers that stack just great in the freezer drawers.

I've stopped buying ready meals - unless they're at a price that's just too good to miss in the whoopsie section! Trays of meat are always divided up into portions (some for 2 and some singles for the odd extra portion if my son arrives), put into labelled freezer bags with ties and stashed. Liver is always divided into small margarine tubs with enough for 2 x 2 portions from each pack - labelled on the lids and again frozen.

Between my pressure cooker, microwave and slow cooker, I hardly ever use my oven these days AND it's staying much cleaner .

mummysaver

This made me laugh as this is what happens to me as well! A small pack of mince seems to somehow morph into several ready meals that I then need to find room in the freezer for!

And I know I'm being really silly, but using things from the cupboards and freezers sends me into a panic and I feel I have to replace them asap! But I'm trying to get myself under some sort of control and have joined this month's grocery challenge.

Still I'd much rather have a freezer full of ready meals that are all home cooked than just a couple of packs of peas!

MRSMCAWBER

Me too :T my freezer is like the magic porridge pot (showing my age now )

I took out 4oz of mince and 2 sausages the other day to make a savoury meat roll -then had to try and get half of the roll back in the freezer again :rotfl:
I am deffinitely planning on another chest freezer for next year.. my pots of veggies are to blame

• I have 28 bags of roasted tomatoes/veggies from the garden -each one enough for the base of a pasta dish for me n hubby... and still more to fetch in :T
• free apples n blackberries stewed in there -picking more tomorrow:D
• enough cheese to start a dairy (got loads on half price offer for hubby)

on top of the usual stuff.. I need to get some used up ready for batch cooking hubbies soups/casseroles for his flask for winter lunches at work :eek:

Still at least we won't go hungry.. and I have only spent €2 out of this months grocery budget -in 13 days :j

maman

RosyRed wrote: »

Only thing is I'm not v good at labelling,so we often end up with a surprise.I need to get better about that!

I'm just the same. I keep meaning to get a freezer pen to label the 'take-away' containers that I use. Anyone know where you get these from?

Olliebeak

maman wrote: »

.........I keep meaning to get a freezer pen to label the 'take-away' containers that I use. Anyone know where you get these from?

I've bought pens from Asda - use the ones that OH uses for labelling his CD's etc. They work for me - and he doesn't notice lol!

HypnoNu

I got freezer labels from lakeland so I can actually label the stuff in the freezer, but i'm sure they do freezer pens too!

floyd

The best pens for freezer labelling IMO are Sharpies, you can get them in Staples or Office World, just don't let the kids get their hands on them as it doesn't wipe off or wash out (unless you use 70% ethanol)