Annual eating down the freezer challenge

It's come to that time of year once again. Our freezer is still full, yet we need to make a lot of room for this year's garden and foraging produce. 

We have two choices. One, we could buy another freezer. Or two, we could eat down what we currently have. I won't lie. I did have a moment where I thought buying another freezer might be a good idea. But my common sense kicked in, and we will once again try to eat up (or down) the freezers' (yes, multiple freezers) contents.

The first thing I need to do is take an inventory of the frozen vegetables in the chest freezer. Partially used opened bags of frozen vegetables have a way of drifting to the bottom of the freezer. I'm sure there are several open bags of peas in there. So, once I know what frozen veggies we have currently, I will limit what I buy in the way of frozen vegetables. I may use a small white board to track what vegetables still remain as we work toward eating down the freezer.

I should do the same with the frozen fruits, syrups, and fruit juices. I came across some dried figs and dried prunes in the freezer the other day. I am also aware that we have some remaining crab applesauce, crabapple juice, and blackberry juice. Do you have any suggestions for using crab apple juice or blackberry juice in summer? We also have some frozen cherries for pies, too. I need to start making plans to use these fruits, especially as this year's cherries are almost ready for harvesting. But first I need to gather all of the containers into one space, perhaps using another whiteboard to help motivate me to use these produce items in a timely manner.

Next I need to corral all of the bread products into one bag and make plans to do a bread pudding, some croutons, bread stuffing, and/or a strata. We accumulate lots of lone slices of bread, squares of cornbread, and muffins. Finding them and keeping them in one spot will help me use them.

After the vegetables and bread products I think I should gather all of the containers of stock, drippings, and fat to keep in one spot and make plans to use it. Since I've been roasting whole chickens again (instead of using b/s breasts), I've made several batches of chicken stock. It's time I start using it up. Do you have any suggestions for using stock besides as the broth for soup?

That will leave frozen desserts (ice cream, sorbet) and individual servings of various meals. My husband is the only one in the family who will eat everything served to him. The rest of us tend to freeze our leftovers, which is great as we're technically not wasting that food. But it does accumulate. So, I need to get my daughters to help me identify those oddball containers of leftovers.

The one food category that I'm not at all concerned about is meat. I keep all of the meat together in the tiny freezer and sort through it every other week. I roughly know what beef, chicken, and pork we have on hand and am making plans for how to use the older cuts of meat soon.

Am I missing anything? Do you have a method of attack for cleaning out your freezer and eating down all of the contents? You can guess what I'll be doing this weekend.

Have a great weekend, friends!

Birthday and Mother's Day 2025 Cookie Baking Gifts

This is turning out to be a show-and-tell week. 

I made this batch of chocolate chip
cake-style cookies using the small scoop

I've been wanting to show you the cookie baking gifts my daughters gave me this year for my birthday and for Mother's Day. They know I like to bake cookies and found gifts I would really appreciate receiving.

For my birthday they gave me this set of three cookie scoops. I've never had cookie scoops, instead I've always used a couple of teaspoons to scoop drop cookie dough. It's time consuming to use a pair of spoons while trying to make every cookie look neat and the whole batch look uniform.

My favorite scoop is the smallest one. I've baked a couple of batches of chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal cookies with this small one. I like the smaller-sized cookie you get with the smallest scoop. My daughters borrowed the scoops last weekend to bake cookies for an event at church. They made both snickerdoodles and gingersnaps using the medium-sized scoop. My guess is they would love if I made some chocolate chip or M & M cookies with the largest scoop. I'll keep that in mind when I want to do something special for them.

what I like about these cookie scoops:

• The cookies are uniform in size and shape, making them visually appealing when sharing with others.
• I don't just like the look of uniformity in size and shape, but the cookies bake evenly as they're all the same size and have the same mounding.
• It's fast and easy to scoop and drop the dough onto the baking sheet. I can't believe how fast it is to get the cookie dough onto the baking sheet with a scoop.
• My fingers stay clean in the process of dropping the dough.

The other gift was for Mother's Day. Again my daughters know that not only do I like to bake cookies, but I like the finished result to look attractive. (Maybe you remember a couple of Christmases ago they gave me a shortbread mold.)

This gift is an embossed rolling pin for imprinting a pattern on rolled out cookie dough before baking. The types of cookies that I will think I will use this for are speculoos, springerle, and gingerbread. If you've ever had Biscoff, that's a speculoos cookie. Springerle, the German anise flavored cookie, is traditionally made with a mold. However, I found recipes online to make a dough that will work with an embossed rolling pin. I'm looking forward to making those. And of course, gingerbread cookies, the thin kind, are a favorite of mine.

what I like about the embossed rolling pin:

• I can make really attractive cookies for gifting and sharing at the holidays, and to please me.
• It will save time and money in "decorating" the cookie by embossing the dough instead of using icing and sprinkles.

These gifts are special in a couple of ways. One, my daughters took the time to think of what I'd like. Two, these are money and time-saving gifts. I can use them to share or gift cookies that look almost professional with just a little effort. The cookie baking gifts are just the sort of thing I would want to buy for myself, but would talk myself out of because of cost. 

Do you use cookie scoops? What do you think of them? Have you tried an embossed rolling pin?