How my freezer challenge is going (plus Food Waste Friday!)

Well.

My freezer isn’t empty, but it is looking SO much better of late.

What have I been doing with my freezer contents?

Well, I do have one freezer loss to report:

Though we ate almost all of the taco meat in our freezer, this last little bit of thawed meat stayed in the fridge a little too long.

On to better news!

I used some of the bread to make bread pudding.

I used the frozen tomatoes to make a little batch of tomato sauce.

Which I then used to make some pizza.

I used part of the frozen mashed potatoes to make potato rolls.

and then I used the rest of the mashed potato to make potato cinnamon rolls, which were fluffy and soft and generally delicious.

This isn’t freezer-related, but I used some leftover rice to make rice pudding.

(That also handily used up the last of a container of half and half.)

In other fridge news, we’ve gone through lots of greens this week, in smoothies and in salads, so, yay us!

Unphotographed freezer efforts: I made several chicken meals this week to use up the chicken in the freezer, I made a seafood and chorizo stew to use up my chorizo links, and I made smoothies to use up all the fruit.

So, here’s what I’ve got left…a bit of lunch meat, ravioli, bread odds and ends, bread crumbs, and a bit of cooked chicken.

(The chicken breasts are new this week, so I’m not counting them. 😉 )

The ravioli will not be hard to use.

The lunch meat? I’m gonna have to think about that.   The texture is a little iffy when thawed, so it’s not like I’d be prone to using it in sandwiches.

I think I’m gonna use a French toast casserole recipe to use up more of the bread odds and ends. And I’ll also probably make some croutons.

(Hit me with a favorite overnight french toast recipe, please!)

The bread crumbs? Not even worried about ’em!   They can hang out in the freezer until I have a recipe that calls for them.

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So! My freezer is in very decent shape right now, and to keep it that way, I’m gonna start a new habit of posting fridge AND freezer pics on Food Waste Fridays.

(Because clearly I need some accountability in order to keep my freezer from descending into a stuffed disorganized state.)

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How’d things go at your house this week with food waste?   And those of you were who cleaning out your freezers with me, how’s it going?
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P.S.   Joshua has some photos up from his trip to CA!

(Where he visited the Joshua tree park. Because of course.)