major freezer intervention

I need a serious intervention. And I suppose the third to last day of 2011 is as good of time as ever to begin one. Can we talk about that for a second here? Three more days until 2011 is over? I just got used to writing 2011 last month. 2012 seems like it’s too far away, not three days away.

Anyway, about that intervention - I should probably ask for an intervention from Friday Night Lights, which I just started watching yesterday on Netflix after the show ending earlier this year. Five episodes down, 71 one more to go. I’m pretty sure I can make that happen by the time I go back to school on January 9, don’t you think?

What I really need an intervention from is my food stash in my freezer. I don’t know what happened, but it has gotten way too out of control in the past few months. The Husband has been asking me to clean it out or throw food away or do something because it’s bursting at the seams, which means it is all that more difficult for him to reach for a frozen cookie at night without thousands of baked goods and frozen leftovers falling out on top of him.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

That’s bad right there. I’m pretty ashamed to even show you those pictures to tell you the truth. However, I thought it’s a good time to clean out the freezer. You know what they say — nothing like starting a new year with an empty freezer.

No? You’ve never heard that one before?

Whatever.

I’ve made it my mission to start using up all of my freezer stash in the next few weeks. So here’s what I’m working with… it’s kind of scary.

Some lonely frozen vegetables from the garden this year — diced tomatoes, whole tomatoes, sliced green peppers, salsa peppers, and half a bag of frozen broccoli.

My chocolate stash — three bars of dark chocolate and my pan of frozen fudge failure concoction that I promptly threw away after taking this picture. I never did figure out the whole fudge thing this holiday season.

My other frozen treat stash — Mint Chocolate Mocha No Bake Cookies, gluten free brownies, Chewy Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies, and some other cookies I received from the blogger cookie swap. Those all promptly went back into the freezer after being taste tested to make sure nothing had been freezer burnt. Don’t worry — they’re still good.

I also forgot about my bags of pesto cheese sauce and another bag full of pesto — I see a lot of pasta in my future!

 
I have two leftover soups — one of which is black bean butternut squash, and the other one I will have to let you know what it is when I eat it because I have absolutely no clue as to what it is. Here’s to hoping it’s a good one!

And then there was my bread stash — holy cow. So this is what I’m going to do. Whenever I bake something new, instead of putting it into the freezer to eat some later, I’m just going to give it away because apparently I have been housing enough for a football team.
 

I’ve got wraps for the husband, brown rice tortillas, two bags of Rudi’s, homemade sandwich bread, raw bagels, oatmeal scones, scuffins, cinnamon rolls from Christmas (I will personally be finishing those myself), and blueberry bagels. #ridiculous

Then there was this lone bag of Sweet Potato Fries that I never blogged about and/or ate. What a failure. In my defense, they got lost in the freezer.

 
I am so pumped to know I still have curry chickpea burgers in the freezer — some of them look a little freezer burned, but I’m sure they’ll be fine. And even if they’re not, I’ll eat them anyways.

Last but not least, a few Larabars that have only been hanging out in there for a few days. Larabar was kind enough to send me some of their newest flavor, Cappuccino. It has a great coffee taste and has whole almonds in the bar. It’s a definite keeper!

I ended up throwing some things out that were far from salvageable, but for the most part I now have a good idea of how I’m going to be using up some of these freezer items in the next few days.

 
Much better, don’t you think? Nah, now it’s just organized chaos. Does someone want to come over and help me eat bread? I”m going to keep the chocolate for myself.

Question: Have any ideas on how to creatively use this food?

Tagged as: food, freezer, intervention, leftovers