Freezer Sessions 2019...

This is good to know. Thank you!

I was sitting on the fence for about two years regarding the Instant Pot. I wasn't sure about a pressure cooker and I do like the crock pot. I saw that I could use it as a crock pot if I wanted and that's what sold me on finally taking the plunge and asking for it as a gift. I've been slow to learning it but I thought I'd try things out when I have extra time in the kitchen to make mistakes. I will update with any freezer meals that I make using the Instant Pot.

 

Will be following this, as I too am still on the fence about an Instant Pot. Will have to do a bit more research before going ahead and buying one as they are quite expensive here. Maybe a gift for Christmas.

 

Added a container of stewed apples and 1/2 an iced ginger cake to the freezer. Will be nice for desserts over the next few months.

Do any on you have a 'spreadsheet' of what you have in your freezers? How do you record what you have stored?

 

I do write down a list every few weeks. I have items stored in cloth shopping bags. A red one has meat in it, green one is pizza crusts and shredded cheese, blue one hold bakery items and the tan one veggies.

 

Diedra, that is a great idea. One of my goals this year is to utilise the outside freezer better and as it is a chest freezer it gets disorganised very quickly. Will want to look into this more.

 

Yes, they are quite expensive. There were sales going on for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I started to track prices on them in July. Amazon had a good sale on it during their Prime Day. I had it in my cart that day but still couldn't hit the buy button at that point. LOL!

 

I like the color coded cloth bag idea! I try to keep all similar items in the same grocery bags to pull from the chest freezer. Did you make your bags?

I don't have list of the items in my freezer. I do label the date and the frozen item. Sometimes I'm super specific if I'm planning to use that item for a later day. For ex. the freezer bag might say: 8 March 2019; 3 cups of shredded chicken; Youth Group chicken dish; Part 1 of 2; This helps when my family is getting food out of the freezer for me.

 

Here's some photos from my small chest freezer

 

Wow Diedra! I would've ketp my chest freezer if I had organized it like that

 

I hated finding something in the freezer before I started with the bags. I had an upright freezer in the side by side refrigerator and I hated it. Was fine if everything was totally flat but other wise things just fell out. Might have worked if I had tried small cloth shopping bags for storing things.

 

I really like the way you organized it. Our freezer is a hand me down from my grandmother. It had one shelf when we got it. Did your freezer come with two shelves or did you buy one? I never even considered getting a second shelf until now.

 

It only had one. I ordered another. It was a little pricy but well worth it.

 

Diedra, I have freezer envy. Thanks for the photos it gives me some direction to head. I love having the second freezer just don't like how it is organised.

 

I finally opened my instapot and made refried beans for my 1st attempt and it was a success. Made an all day process in the crockpot happen in less then 2 hours tops from start to finish. After that I made turkey stock in 1 1/2 hrs. That also usually takes mutliple hours to cook down. No idea how I'll feel about it with meat, but time will tell. I like to stock up on homemade beans in the freezer for Mexican food nights, so this will help make that happen for sure.

 

Michelle, nice that you have had a few successes already

 

Tetris is a perfect way to explain getting things out of the freezer!!