Back to the annual eating down of the freezers

So, last week I disciplined myself and bought very little at the grocery store. Okay, the truth is it was a Walmart week and I don't buy that much at Walmart. I buy most of our groceries at WinCo because their prices are better than Walmart. But Walmart is the nearby store, so I go there to fill in gaps every other week. But I like to think that I was disciplined last week.

Here's where I find out if I have any discipline in me. This week is a WinCo week. I've been making out my shopping list with the understanding that I have a lot of food that needs being used in meals still in the freezers. So, first off, no new frozen vegetables and no more butter. Also no new fresh apples. I have 2 bags of apples still. No mozzarella cheese. I discovered we have 2 blocks of mozzarella in the spare fridge. We only use mozzarella for pizza. I had become in the habit of picking up a new block every time I went to WinCo. Due to actually opening my eyes this week, I realized we have enough pizza cheese. I'm on the fence whether to buy a whole chicken again this week. I buy a specific brand and it's a much better price at WinCo than any other store in town. And I did roast one of the three that I had just this week. So, I may buy one more whole chicken.

In previous shopping trips I've bought perhaps 8 to 9 different produce items every other week. This week, I've only put bananas (need in smoothies), carrots, and watermelon on my shopping list for produce. I will continue to use frozen vegetables. But also, we're at a point in the summer where I can harvest more and more from the garden each week. When we finish our last head of store cabbage (by the weekend), I'll begin harvesting the garden cabbage. I'm harvesting lettuce and cooking greens several days per week. I have a bell pepper ready to pick. And last night we had the first of the zucchini harvest. This is a long-winded way of saying we have a lot of both garden and frozen produce right now and don't need that much more.

So my list for this week's "big" shopping trip -- in addition to bananas, carrots, and watermelon, we need milk, peanut butter, salt, raisins, peanuts, cheddar, canned tuna, and a bag of flour. Even though I have some flour at home, I want to work up to a 30 lb supply of whole wheat, a 30 lb supply of bread flour, and a 30 lb supply of all-purpose flour. So each time I shop I add a bag or two of flour to my cart. That's a pretty small grocery list, isn't it?

For the freezer -- here's the current state of the chest freezer.

As you can see, there's lots more room at the top of the freezer, and that's with adding 6 quarts of cherries this week (on the right side). My daughters have been good about using up their own foods (in the center). And I have been using frozen fruit and vegetables from the left side. I need to make more of a point to roast pumpkin seeds. That hanging bin is full of pumpkin and squash seeds. My family really enjoys sweet and spicy mixed nuts. I think I'll try a batch of sweet and spicy pumpkin seeds and see what they think. Do you roast pumpkin seeds? Have you found a tasty way to roast them?

We've used quite a bit of food from the freezers in the last 2 weeks. Tonight's dinner used a whole chicken, a quart of chicken stock, various leftover bread products (corn bread and stale ends of loaf bread), and celery leaves. Tomorrow night I'll serve leftover chicken and gravy, plus I'll use some frozen apple chunks in spiced apples for dessert, frozen peas, lettuce from the garden, a tomato from the fridge, and potatoes with frozen rosemary.

In some ways, it has seemed like we made room in the freezer rather quickly. But when I think about all of the other frozen foods left to use up, it seems like it will take a long, long time to use it all.

What's the state of your freezer?