real food abc's - freezer cooking

October 14, 2013


real food abcs - freezer cooking

F for Freezer

When eating more real food the freezer is your friend. It has helped me out in so many ways to eat less processed. Even if you do not have a large freezer, you can still benefit from any space you may have available.

Fruits and veggies (F&V)
Although eating fresh F&V is important, there is a place for frozen. The nice thing about frozen F&V is that they are usually frozen very shortly after picking. Which means they will not lose as many vitamins and minerals.

Frozen F&V also will last longer. How many times have you bought some bok choy, mushrooms, beets, and zucchini loftily thinking about all the recipes you will create with them only to find them wilted and moldy a week or two later in the fridge. (That cannot be just me.) But with frozen foods, if you do not make that fancy recipe you spotted on Pinterest, you don't have to worry about throwing food out. You will have several months to use those freezer items.

Meats
Meat is expensive. Organic meat is more expensive. Grass-fed beef is really expensive. But if you buy in bulk like I talked about in E for Eatwild, you can get great meat much cheaper and have it available in your freezer. Another option, which I do all the time, is to try to always buy meats when on sale. So even if you were not planning on spending 75 dollars on meat one week, but there were a bunch of markdowns, snatch them up. Then you will be set for a while and the next few weeks your grocery bill should be less because you already have the meats you might need.

Freezer cooking
Another way to use your freezer for real food is by doing freezer cooking. If you have not done this yet, I highly recommend it. It really makes life so much easier, saves time, and may not take a ton of extra time to do.  I did a post on freezer cooking using my crock pot. In 5 days I was able to make 10 extra meals at the same time I cooked our regular dinner.

So now that you have F&V, meats, and freezer meals stocked in your freezer, you will have less of a need for processed foods.


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