🌿The Apocalypse Has Been Canceled: We’re Eating the Freezer

 

I opened the freezer the other day and decided things had gotten ridiculous. It was packed, with vegetables crammed into every available space. Broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, carrots, corn, peas, beans, berries and assorted bags of things I would have to pull out to identify. I took a picture, which somehow made it look even worse. Then I remembered this wasn't our only freezer. We have another freezer in the garage, and another refrigerator with a side freezer. Apparently I was preparing for the apocalypse. Or maybe I was planning on catering the apocalypse.  Anyway, the apocalypse has been canceled. We're eating the freezer.

This comes at a good time. We're trying to pay down some bills, and I'm also working on downsizing our lives a little. Buying more groceries while several freezers are already full doesn't help either project, so for the next couple of weeks we're shopping at home first. We will still buy fresh produce, bread and other things we need, but before I plan dinner or make a grocery list, I'm going to look in the freezer. There is plenty to work with. I have frozen fruit for our smoothies. Vegetables can be used for dinners. Corn and beans can go into taco salad. Odds and ends can go into soup. There are breads, grains and things I bought for recipes I apparently intended to make someday. There are also French fries and ice cream. We're not suffering.

When I told Travis we were going to start eating our way through the freezer, he immediately suggested the bacon. This is a man with serious coronary artery disease. Naturally, surrounded by enough broccoli to feed us until Christmas, he found the bacon. We compromised. He can crumble a piece over his salad.

I don't intend to turn this into a punishment. We aren't going to eat things we hate just because I bought them three years ago. If something is no longer good, it can go. If we know we're never going to eat it, it can go too. But perfectly good food that we like needs to get eaten before I buy another version of it. I don't need another bag of broccoli because broccoli is healthy when there are already three bags of broccoli somewhere behind the cauliflower.

I especially want to empty the big freezer in the garage. Once upon a time, having an extra freezer seemed like a good idea. I could stock up when things were on sale and always have plenty of food on hand. It worked. I have plenty. Now I'd like to get the food down to what will comfortably fit in the freezer space we actually need. Then I can clean out the big freezer, unplug it and get it out of the garage. That's one less appliance, one less electric bill and one less place to put food and forget about it. In the meantime, eating what we already have should mean a smaller grocery bill, and the money we don't spend can go toward bills we're trying to pay down.

So that's the plan. We're going to eat what we've already bought, spend less at the grocery store and see if we can eliminate an appliance in the process. There will be no elaborate freezer organization system and no purchase of matching containers to organize all the things I bought too many of. We're just going to eat the food. Starting, apparently, with the bacon.