Empty the Freezer for Christmas!

It’s that time again when it’s a good idea to empty the freezer for Christmas.  My home freezer is quite small and there’s food I’ve frozen that needs to be cooked and eaten.  There’s so much more exciting food I could buy at the shops, if only the freezer were empty!   The freezers in supermarkets hold such wonderful goodies, yet I seem bogged down by frozen food I don’t fancy 🙂

One of the issues with freezing food is that when you’re cooking for one it takes a LOT longer to run the freezer down than you’d think.

I have 2½ drawers in the freezer, two measure 14″ x 14″ x 7″ and the other drawer is 14″x 7″ x 7″.   It can be tricky to fit much in!

What I want to achieve is the following:

• I finally HAVE to eat all the food I’ve been avoiding/putting off cooking; some has been lurking for four months, uneaten.
• An empty freezer has the potential to be filled with more interesting things next time.
• In the very unlikely event I do see something “great for Christmas” in the weeks leading up to the end of the year I’ll be able to just grab it, knowing I’ve space in the freezer for it!

It’s always good, at about this time of the year, to run the freezer down just so you know that if you do get any great food, you’ve space for it – there can be some lovely new ranges in the lead up to Christmas that are tempting. PLUS, if nothing appears that is tempting, then at least you go into the New Year with a clearer freezer, new year, new start!

So I’ve just taken a look through and have taken out one Lidl/Braemoor chicken steak in breadcrumbs.  That’s not going to put much of a dent in it – and, as a pack of 6, there are still FIVE more to eat in the next 4-5 weeks 🙁  I bought those about four months ago and haven’t eaten one yet!  So that’s on tonight’s menu!

Slow Cooker Comes to the Rescue!

This is where my slow cooker will come in handy, as the next item lurking in the freezer was a 1Kg bag of frozen, mixed vegetables I’d bought at Sainsburys.  Do not ask me why I thought this was a good idea.  My head was telling me “slow cooker vegetable soup with frozen vegetables”, but then I didn’t get round to it!  But today’s the day; they’ve been in the freezer about three months as the “basics range” packaging didn’t make them look exciting 🙂

There were also a couple of bags of frozen leeks lurking that I’d bought/chopped/frozen … then ignored.  So, later today I’ll use those up and get the slow cooker on the go!  I’ve no idea why I bought those, except it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The slow cooker will enable me to tip all these things in, along with some other food that needs using up … fit the lid on … and walk away for 8 hours!  Of course, I’ll then have a whole batch of homemade vegetable soup that needs to be eaten – or frozen! grrr.

My annual freezer clear out, ready for Christmas … has officially started!