Planning with your Freezer
Our dieta consists of sticking to a diet that is high fat, moderate protein, and low carb. Which is equivalent to foods that are fresh, local and perishable. Which means you can’t keep your food supply too long without it spoiling. That’s the downside to getting rid of processed foods from your diet. You can’t keep it in the cupboard for year until you need it. So how do we propose to store your food to decrease the amount of trips you go to the grocery store?
The answer is your freezer! Planning ahead is key to successfully sticking to the dieta, and you can do that by utilizing your freezer. You can start by making meals on the weekends for during the week. This makes you during the week meals as simple as heating up and eating. You can also just make a double serving of everything you make and put that extra serving in the freezer for another day. This practice of meal planning will be needed to consistently be prepared each week. It saves time and frustration! So you no longer have days where you ask yourself, "what do I eat?" or "oh yeah, we have lunch-in today, so what can I eat here?". Planning ahead to avoid these situations is the goal of meal planning and meal prepping.
No matter which diet you choose to follow, planning ahead is going to be the key to successfully sticking When you have more time, make yourself some time-saving cooking hacks that can be frozen and pulled out when needed. Here are some time-saving hacks:
- Mince garlic and sauté it with some butter until it starts to brown, then remove it from the heat. Let the sauté cool then fill up an ice cube tray with the sautéed mixture. (I suggest the silicone ice cube trays to make the frozen garlic cubes easier to pop out.)
- Tomato paste drops. These are simple storage savers for all the best home cooks. Simply put two tablespoons of tomato paste on a silicone baking sheet (repeat this until the sheet is full) then place the baking sheet in the freezer until frozen. The tomato paste will be frozen into little mounds or rounds. After frozen, you can put these in reusable freezer bag. Just take them as you need them.
- Stock supplies. If you are the person who wants to make as much from scratch as you can, then you should think about making and keeping your own stock on hand. I suggest making one-quart batches of chicken, beef, and vegetable stock every other month. You can keep these in a few quart freezer bags that can be pulled out at any time.
- Veggie sauté kits. In a reusable freezer bag combine cut up vegetables with your choice of oil and spices then then place in freezer and remove when ready. This way all you have left to do is cook the mixture.
- Buy in bulk and freeze in normal portion. Items such as ground beef, whole pork loin, chicken thighs in family packs, etc. You can save money by buying in bulk, then bring that bulk food home, portion it out to normal amounts used for your meals, and freeze it in these portion sizes. This way you have the food needed on hand and can take out what you need.
If you’re anything like me I hate to contribute to waste so instead of using freezer bags, you can always look for better alternatives that cut back on plastic waste. Here is a link to safe freezer option: