These are all great ideas; particularly the soup idea. People don’t realize how filling, healthy and cheap soup can be. You can also throw a cup of pasta and some sauteed veggies in there to make a creamy pasta minestrone dish. I actually just wrote a cookbook & free guide to cheap healthy eating which you can check out at http://www.threedollardinner.com. Jerry

We save leftover veggies in a food bag in the freezer and then use them to make soup. The veggies make delicious veggie soup, but we found homemade meat soups (like chicken and veg) weren’t very nice.

Also, if you are serious about using your freezer for meals or leftovers etc…
get a number of lidded rectangular containers for putting food in, that are all the same. Often we use the ones saved from the chinese takeaways – with four of us, even going once or twice a year means we are not that short on them.
fill these up with whatever you are freezing and then stack them.
Wait for them to have frozen (a day or two, perhaps, maybe less) THEN, and this is the good part, take the frozen food out of the box (maybe need to stand in hot water for a few minutes)… put the frozen food inside a food bag of the appropriate size and voila, then it is frozen in a shape that will stack easily and can be easily labelled, without keeping all your containers tied up in the freezer or ruined with various labels on top of each other, and your containers are free to use again!
[Do not put the food bag in the box when you freeze it. Before the food freezes it will squelch into the corners and fold over itself and make pockets and all sorts of other joys, and then even when you cut the bag off, you still end up with little bits of plastic you have to fish out of your pan when it all defrosts again.]

I know I can just highlight and print/selection, but a “print article” button would be better.
thanks

I noticed several comments to the effect of “I love leftovers,” which entirely missed the point of your tip on using leftovers as pizza toppings.

1. You indicated this was a great way to use up any leftovers, after you’d already eaten the dish at least twice.

2. Be that as it may, there are some people who don’t like leftovers, period.

Keep slinging that good hash, son.

(and thanks also to the commenter who adjusted the recipe for ‘condensed’!)

We also use the pizza idea. In addition to pizza we also make quesadillas with leftover meat. This is especially useful if there’s a few bites of a steak or grilled chicken breast left. Normally these would just go into the trash but I now save them and then next night I warm them in a frying pan with cumin & chili powder and use it as the filling for quesadillas. We always have cheese and tortillas in the house. My husband almost prefers this to the original meal.

Clair

http://eatwelleatcheap.blogspot.com/2009/04/never-waste-flavor-homemade-stock_16.html

The freezer compressor runs when the temperature rises above a certain point. The thermal capacity of air is much lower than that of any solid or liquid. So if there is a lot of air in the freezer the compressor is going to run more frequently but for shorter periods of time. If the freezer is full of liquids or solids, the compressor is going to run less frequently, but for longer periods of time. The same amount of energy is being used either way because heat is entering at the same rate through the freezer’s insulation.

Let’s say you open the door to your freezer and leave it open long enough for all the air to be replaced by room temperature air. We’ll also assume the freezer was set at 25 degrees and the room temperature is 65 degrees, a 40 degree difference. If the freezer is filled with nothing but air, the thermal capacity of the contents of the freezer has increased by about 36700 joules. If it is filled completely with water bottles and no air, the energy increase is 0 joules. Sounds like a pretty easy way to save some money and energy, however, you have to include the energy required to freeze all that water in the first place. Not counting the energy needed to change states, the thermal capacity of water is roughly 3300 times higher than that of air. So you would have to open the freezer door and let all of that air out 3300 times to equal the amount of energy required to freeze all that water. No savings there.

What about if the power goes out, it will save some money then, right? That’s going to depend on what you keep in there. I have about five dollars worth of stuff, not counting vodka, so nothing for me to lose, really. I also know that over the last five years living here, the power has never been out for more than an hour at a time. If you keep a lot more stuff in there, and the power goes out more often and for longer periods of time, it could be worthwhile.

also, can you give more details on how you freeze food? In a different post, you mentioned freezing casseroles. What all does your family freeze? How do you freeze it? I want to do more freezing (I’m single and prefer to cook for myself but don’t as often as I should), but my repertoire of what I know I can freeze is quite limited.

Tried your meatloaf recipe this evening. What kind of rice do you use? Our meatloaf ended up being crunchy. Also, what temperature do you cook it at? I didn’t see that in the recipe. Thank you!

Next time though! Thanks for the tips, Trent!

We usually use our leftover meats for sandwiches or casseroles. But the pizza idea is great too. If you like to buy frozen pizzas (there are organic varieties out there), you can easily put the frozen pieces on the pizza and bake it in the oven like you normally would.