It’s not a hidden secret that your food budget is usually the one area that can be cut down. From shopping for the right items at the grocery store to not letting any of your food go to waste there’s lots of ways cut back. But your freezer can be one of your biggest assets when it comes to not wasting food and saving money. Here’s some things that you’ll find in a frugal persons freezer!
Fresh Fruit
I love finding good prices on fresh fruit at the grocery store but sometimes my family just doesn’t eat them quick enough. So I’ll flash freeze them (place them spread out on a cookie sheet and freeze for an hour) than place in a ziplock bag to use later. I’ll just them in smoothies and shakes or even flavor my water with them.
Bread
We actually go through a lot of bread. From sandwiches to French toast it gets used so I stock up and place a couple loaves in the freezer. Then I’m not making last minute runs to the grocery store.
Homemade Stock
I purchased a box of chicken from Zaycon during their awesome sales and throw some of it into the crock pot to cook and shred. That makes awesome homemade chicken stock that you can easily place in containers and freeze (or can if that’s more your thing).
Meat
Just like I said above I bought a box of chicken and instead of freezing all of it, I cooked up some and shredded it. After it cooled I put it in ziplock bags and froze it for quick meals. This saves me time and money when it comes to cooking dinners.
Fresh Vegetables
It’s gardening season and that means in a few months we’ll start seeing lots of vegetables to pick. Don’t let them go bad, freeze them! I’ll freeze peppers for fajitas as well as zucchini (shredded for zucchini bread) corn, carrots, green beans and more!
Milk
This is another thing you’ll find in frugal freezers! We’ll buy our milk from Costco but that means we’re buying 2 at a time. If your family doesn’t go through milk very fast this is a great way to save it. Keep in mind it might separate or go yellow, that’s normal and your milk is still fine as long as it’s been kept at freezing temperatures.
Cheese
Another thing we buy at Costco is their cheese. Either block or shredded it’s something we stock up on when it’s on sale. (Please note I’ve found that block cheese when frozen becomes crumbly and harder to shred. If you’re family eats more shredded, I’d shred it first and then freeze it).
Cookie Dough
We love cookies. I’m pretty much known as the cookie monster in our house. So having cookie dough in the freezer is awesome. I’ll pull a couple of balls of cookie dough out of the freezer and cook them so that I’m not eating the whole batch. This is great for last minute meals I’m taking to neighbors as well. I’ll just whip up a batch of cookie dough and roll it into balls. Then flash freeze it and place in bags until needed. (If I’m really in a pinch for time I’ll place all the cookie dough on seran wrap and make it into a log. Then I just cut off a slice to thaw it before cooking)
Leftovers
Guys I have young kids that don’t always love my cooking (surprise surprise). So sometimes we have a lot of leftovers that we won’t finish off before they go bad. So I’ll put them inside single serving containers (like the ones our deli meat comes in) and freeze them. Then my husband can take them to work with him or i can heat one up for lunch.
What’s usually in your freezer? I actually invested in a deep freezer as well to stretch or dollars even further. It’s been awesome to have especially when I find those awesome deals! Right now we also have cottage cheese, a frozen turkey, hash browns, veggies and more!
