Freezing For Later

cmplxty in Foodies Bee Hive • last year

Hi fellow Hiveians,

Today I wanted to appreciate the act of being prepared and doing a little bit of smart shopping!

Freezing For Later

A few years ago we got into saving a bunch of money by signing up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program with one of our local farms and holy shit has it saved us so much money in the long term! I know that it's often easier to just get food every few days from the grocery store but as we all know, that gets expensive fairly quickly. To be able to get ultra fresh food from a local farm, support a local business, keep families and others around us employed locally that's real freedom and one of the most important things that we can do in the economic challenges we are facing right now.

With that CSA and all of the food that we get from it, towards the end of the summer one of the things that we make sure we do is take some extras if they offer it, and cut them up and freeze them for the winter time! There is nothing like fresh veggies right from the farm, cut up that day and freshly frozen in little baggies. Yes I Know the baggies are not the best and we likely have microplastics abound but you have to pick and choose your battles here.. lol

One of the things that we started to do last year was also visit the local butcher every couple weeks and get some fresh meats that we would also put into baggies for the freezer. Every morning we take a baggie of the veggies from the freezer, take a bag of the meat and pop it in the Instapot pressure cooker and set it on the meat soup setting and away we go!

This has been incredibly helpful and convenient in a lot of ways. Yes I would like to get everything cut up and cooking in a regular cooking pot on the stove but the challenge I have is having a really busy work schedule and I would likely forget to come down and stir the soup and end up burning it or ruining it. That would be pretty annoying so we do what we can and use the Instapot pressure cooker as a way to be convenient but also keep doing that home-cooked meal stuff!

No joke we've saved thousands of dollars every year just in grocery costs by doing this CSA program. I bet if we did calculations right now, we would likely have saved 4,000 dollars last year with the cost of groceries and all of the food that we were able to get every week, make into salads and take the extras to cut them up and toss them in the freezer. We've been doing this religiously for the past 6 years and it's been wonderful!

My new favorite thing though for sure is going to these local butchers and stocking up on meats for the freezer. We get a mixture of stew beef or stir fry beef strips and put those in their own baggies. A lot of the butchers will also give you a discount if you buy a certain amount. For this one we went to recently, you got a 1$ discount per pound if you bought 3 pounds or more. You better believe I got 3 pounds of stir fry beef strips and 3 pounds of ground beef!

The little man has been on a meatball kick lately which is great! He hasn't been loving steak all that much which is fine, some of it can be a little tricky to eat but I was getting a little concerned that he wasn't consuming enough meat in his diet. He eats incredibly well when it comes to veggies and stuff, often eats peppers, cucumbers, brussels sprouts, potatoes and all kinds of other things that we cook or cut up at home. That part is good but I wanted to make sure that he also ate meat as well for the other complex mineral and vitamin profiles that those offer, particularly for growing little boys! The kid is a little machine with how much he is eating and growing lately hahaha.

It definitely feels good to prepare and store these things. One of the things that I'm looking forward to very much is when I can go hunting! I am going to take a hunting class this coming spring so that I can prepare all of the things that I need in order to go hunting, starting small and try to go turkey hunting first and graduating up to deer. Being able to hunt and get my own meat would be such a game changer for me, filling my freezer for my family with something that I was able to harvest myself and use as many pieces of it as possible. That's really an amazing thing! One step at a time that's for sure!

^-CmplXty. _{Real human written content, never AI.}

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last year in Foodies Bee Hive by cmplxty

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taliakerch last year

oh it's so great!
freezing is very useful! it keeps all vitamins inside and don't destroy them like heating and cooking

I was too lazy that summer and didn't do it
Now in winter I regret about it;)

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cmplxty last year

There’s always this summer coming up to freeze things for later!

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takhar last year

This is arguably smart shopping at its finest, my parent also prefers freezing fresh foods, especially veggies for later when she'll actually need to cook them. For me, I always prefer eating fresh foods, because that's when the energy of the food is at its best.

Going hunting for food is a great step towards self-reliance, good luck with the hunting class when it starts :)

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cmplxty last year

Yeah we get the freshest of foods in the summertime when we pick up our share directly from the farm - freezing it from there is great to lock in those nutrients! I enjoy fresh food for sure but in the days of being busier than we can manage often times - I’ll take what I can get and freeze the stuff to plop it in the pot later lol

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takhar last year

Lol, sure, we can't always have fresh foods, especially when we're short on time. I'll usually reheat leftovers, put it in my bag and head out for work.

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genesisledger last year

That's precisely why I bought a plot of land. My goal is to be able to produce, I hope, between 60 and 70% of my own food.

As far as meat is concerned, I've already identified a few farms offering direct sales. This way, I know exactly what conditions the animals were raised and fed in.

It's surprising how easy it is to lose this common sense when shopping in supermarkets, where everything is packed in cardboard boxes. My in-laws say they pay more at the butcher's than when they buy from the supermarket. But generally speaking, if the price is lower, it means that the farmer behind the product is paid little or nothing.

What's more, since last week, we've been witnessing a vast protest movement on the part of farmers here. They are trying to blockade Paris, resulting in numerous shortages in supermarkets. I even have the impression that more and more people are turning to direct farm sales for their purchases. I hope they'll realize that, in the long term, this approach is more advantageous and directly supports farmers.

As for freezing meat, that's obviously much better than buying it as you go!

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cmplxty last year

Yeah where we live direct sales from the farmers works out well for the farmers and the prices are often better than the stores. We need to keep buying meat and directly from the farmers as much as possible! I love being able to go directly to the farmers. I hope one day to have a house and land where I can grow a part of our own foods - even the smaller things like potatoes and tomatoes would be a huge win.

Ah the farmers protests - GOOD for them! Fight back against this "green" nonsense! It's just trying to decimate the food supplies - the crazy and evil people at the tops of these governments are trying to destroy farmers first because that's how you control people when the means of producing food is ruined. I've seen videos of the farmers putting soil all over highways and taking giant piles of cow shit and dumping it in front of government buildings. Keep it up guys!!

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genesisledger last year

Yes, I think it's one of the best ways to live today. So I hope you can make this wish come true.

For once, I totally agree with the protest movement. In general, the protesters' rhetoric is mostly "we're working too much, we want more money, the guys who do [insert a job that has nothing to do with their own] earn 2% more than us, it's not normal", but with no substance behind it. This time, it's first and foremost a cause that touches me, so I'm bound to get a little more involved. But above all, it's really important. The good thing is that they're winning their case.

Obviously, the new laws being passed won't be in the interests of all farmers. Some will even be penalized, whereas before they had the advantage, but it's making things happen for the majority.

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hivebuzz last year

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kingsleyy last year

Wow!
That program must have been saving you guys a lot of money.
I hope the management don't go bankrupt

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rafzat last year

We do this in my house as well. We store fresh foods in the freezer so they won’t get spoilt and it is always better to do it this way because we buy in bulk and buy at a cheaper rate
It’s good that you wanna learn hunting
I hope you find the right person to teach you

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djbravo last year

Such things are very good for our health and the good thing is that they can be used for a long time when frozen.

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