It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

dharm999

Where to start?!

Virtually all bakery products, bread, bagels, crumpets, pancakes, muffins (savoury not sweet).  We freeze our sliced loaves and toast from frozen

milk, butter, cheese but not soft cheese like philadelphia.  If we are freezing milk, then it gets put into smaller containers, so we only defrost a small qunatiyy at a time

vurtually all veg, as an example, we always end up with a few sad looking onions, so they get chopped up and frozen raw or cooked.  Having a portion cooked is really helpful when making quick meals.  We always used to waste garlic, so now it gets chopped up and frozen or roasted and then frozen.  Chillies get blitzed up and put in ice cube trays to make them easier to use.  Potatoes get mashed or par boiled for roasties.  Mushrooms get cleaned, chopped in slices and frozen.  Pretty much anything looking as if we are going to waste gets frozen.  We either roast or chargrill peppers and freeze them, the huge bags of peppers from Asda are great for that.  Herbs get blitzed with a bit of oil, frozen in ice cube trays, so easy to use.

Lemons, limes and oranges are zested and juiced, and they get frozen.  Soft fruit is stewed down for crumbles and frozen.  So quick to make a crumble if you have the fruit ready to go.  We also freeze crumble topping and breadcrumbs.

If you can find stuff that’s reduced then even better, as then the saving works out bigger

we also batch cook, and freeze things, so I do a vat of pasta sauce base, simply onions, garlic, herbs, salt, sugar, tomatoes.  Just let it simmer down for a couple of hours, and then you have a really good base for adding other ingredients to

we make hummus, and freeze that.  There are different recipes we use, so replace the chick peas with white beans, cannellini beans, kidney beans, so not strictly hummus but something similar.  I also replace lemon for lime which gives the dip another twist.   I also make a pesto with spinach, rocket, cashews, etc.. as much cheaper than using basil and pine nuts.  Again that gets made in a huge batch and portions frozen

if I am making a cake, always do two, and freeze one in portions, sometimes you just need to have cake, and it’s a godsend being able to have some quickly.  Again with biscuits, do double or treble quantities of the mix and freeze the uncooked mix, in portions, enough for one baking tray.

We have really tried to reduce our food waste, and now throw away virtually nothing.

Pollycat

SuperSecretSquirrel said:

Regards hard cheeses like cheddar, if you grate it first, then put in a tub to freeze, it's a lot easier to retrieve just the amount you need - it beaks apart quite easily by hand while still frozen. Much easier than hacking away at a big frozen lump, or defrosting the whole thing! If you just want to buy a big cheap block and portion it up to have say 200g from a 1kg block in the fridge at a time you can just slice it up into portions and freeze. Of course you could have a mix of both, have some portioned up chunks and a smaller tub of grated if that works for you too 🙂

I do this with parmesan too.
I hate the shop-bought powder stuff so I grate on the biggest size and freeze in a tupperware box.
We use quite a lot so it's handy to have some ready.

SuperSecretSquirrel

On the subject of sad onions, I like to keep an everlasting pickle jar in the fridge. Big clean empty jar, swish around a bit of boiling water a few times to fully rinse out and get rid of any nasties, pour in some malt vinegar, salt, sugar, peppercorns, chilli flakes, then chop up any raw onions that might otherwise not last, and throw them in. Close lid, give a good shake, top up with more vinegar if needed until all onions are covered. Throughout the summer I kept taking some out of the jar to top salads and topping up the jar as and when spare onions were available. Lasted us months 😋 Will start another one once I get to the end of the Christmas pickles I think!

linz

-taff said:

I freeze butter, lard, marg, cheese [but as Jackie says] cheddar gets a bit crumbly so you can't slice it when it's been frozen, black pudding, malt loaf, garlic cloves, parmesan rinds, chillies whole, flour, dried fish. There's probably more but that's off the top of my head

I did not know about freezing garlic cloves, thankyou! I tried preserving them in salted water once but didnt think to freeze them  I love this thread, you learn a lot of others.

Paspatur

Tinned pineapple, the tins are too big for me to use in one go. I freeze the extra slices in 2's and take out for recipes or for having with yoghurt.

elsien

linz said:

-taff said:

I freeze butter, lard, marg, cheese [but as Jackie says] cheddar gets a bit crumbly so you can't slice it when it's been frozen, black pudding, malt loaf, garlic cloves, parmesan rinds, chillies whole, flour, dried fish. There's probably more but that's off the top of my head

I did not know about freezing garlic cloves, thankyou! I tried preserving them in salted water once but didnt think to freeze them  I love this thread, you learn a lot of others.

And ginger, if you're not already doing that. 

Brambling

elsien said:

linz said:

 did not know about freezing garlic cloves, thankyou! I tried preserving them in salted water once but didnt think to freeze them  I love this thread, you learn a lot of others.

And ginger, if you're not already doing that. 

I always freeze my ginger and grate it from frozen with the skin on, it's not so fibrous and comes out like 'snow' a lot quicker and easier way of dealing with it and just pop the rest back in the freezer.

i do cut in half English muffins , rolls and bagel which make it easier to grab from the freezer, ping for a few seconds and toast if you want it quickly.  

Tinned coconut milk also freezes well 

joedenise

I like to use the Light coconut milk so buy the regular coconut milk and dilute it with water - 400ml tin gives 800ml of Light coconut milk.  When freezing I use a silicon muffin tray which holds 100ml each.  Once frozen they go into a plastic bag and can take out however many pucks I need for a recipe.

Crazycatlady2

Just realised I really should cut bagels and breakfast muffins in half before freezing as I freeze them when see reduced 🫣

London_1

Gosh we are an enterprising lot aren't we ,zero waste in my house as well I don't buy food to throw away, its far too jolly expensive to do that. If it in the slightest way edible it gets eaten or frozen to eat at a later date.

I grew up with war time rationing and post war austerity and my late Mum could conjure a meal out of almost fresh air bless her. I try to remember as many of her money stretching ways as I can. I can still hear her voice in my ear in her soft Scots accent saying "You canny bin that lassie, feed the bin, and your feeding the devil "  

I thinks ingrained into from birth almost  

With the CoL crisis many folk are finding it not so easy to just walk around the supermarket throw stuff  casually into their trollies and piling it high. Now folk are being a lot less wasteful and that not a bad thing ,if anything its probably the best thing to come out of this past year post pandemic when the lean times come you just have to adapt. I think I started adapting back in the 1950s and have been ever since  

We will get through this though and better times will come fingers crossed 

  JackieO xx