Eating Well on the Cheap: Keeping a stocked freezer

Growing up in DC, when it came to freezers all I knew was the tiny excuse for a thing that lives in the fridge and collects half-eaten ice cream cartons. That's what I thought freezers were for - well, for that, Eggos and Toaster Strudel.

Then we moved to Napa, went to our first Junior Livestock Auction and ended up with 25+ lbs of meat from the butcher a few weeks later. After trying to origami it into our fridge's freezer (*not easy to do with frozen goods, just saying*), it became very clear that we were going to have to seriously upgrade our freezer space.

Enter into the picture our 9-cubic-feet baby humming out in the garage. While she was a little bit of an initial investment up front ($199 from Home Depot, you can also find freezers on Craigslist), she's paid for herself many times over in the three years that we've had her.

The beauty of having a ton of freezer space is that you can load up on good deals - especially when it comes to protein. For example, if Whole Foods is having a sale on free-range chicken breasts for 99 cents a pound, go a little crazy and buy 10-15 lbs (or more!). Separate your take into meal-size portions, get out your Ziploc freezer bags and go to town. (Hint: Vacuum sealing is a huge help when it comes to freezer burn - Ziploc sells a cheap manual version at Target that has served us very well.)

One of the keys to getting the most out of your freezer is knowing what's in it and 'shopping' from your freezer when you make your weekly meal plan. Sounds pretty simple and obvious, but not when the bottom of your freezer is hiding under a ham, a sea of ground beef, a whole chicken or two, bags of tomato soup, etc. I've tried to make a habit of doing a freezer list update every quarter or so, and taping it to the wall next to the freezer so we can mark off things as we take them out. This works really well until we get lazy - hence the quarterly list.

I just did our 'State of the Freezer' inventory and found us to be pretty well stocked. Our list is below - you can see why our fridge freezer was simply not cutting it anymore.

Pork
Country style sausage - 3
Ground pork - 1
Ham - 1
Pork chops - 1
Pork country style ribs - 2

Beef
Ground beef - 4
Flank steak - 1
Tri tip - 1
Beef liver - 1

Venison
Venison sausage - 10 (50% pork - quite shockingly delicious!)
Blackstrap - 1

Chicken
Chicken breasts - 5 (the 99 cent deal at Whole Foods - what a steal!)
Whole chickens - 1

Lamb
Lamb steaks - 2
Lamb chops - 2

Fish
Salmon - 7 (my husband went on a deep sea fishing trip - SO WORTH IT)
Trout - 3 (from a long-ago fishing trip...looking pretty shady...)

Soups/Sauces
Tomato soup - 6 (4 from 2011 - must eat!)
Tomato sauce - 3 (from 2011 - ditto; FYI that I recommend canning sauce vs. freezing)
Bolongese sauce - 1
Fava bean pesto cubes
Pesto cubes
Pesto in Tupperware - 4
Chicken broth - 4

Other Protein
Meatballs - 1 bag
Wild ducks - 7 (these babies are collecting dust...)
Lamb bones for stock - 1

Other
Butternut squash risotto - 1
Rangpur lime juice cubes (we use these for our weekly iced tea)