海角大神

Have you ever bought six tomatoes and found that you only really need four of them? Ever cooked two pounds of rice and only really needed one pound of it?

This actually happens at our house fairly often. We鈥檒l make a recipe and find that our kids hate it, so they only eat a little and we have a lot left over. Or we鈥檒l follow a recipe that 鈥渟erves six鈥� but actually produces enough food to feed a small army.

These situations mean that you鈥檙e stuck with fresh vegetables, rice, beans, or other staples that could certainly be used in a recipe, but to do so would completely throw off your meal plan and leave something else on the countertop for too long.

Don鈥檛 throw those extras away. And don鈥檛 just shove them into the back of the fridge, either, because that鈥檒l just eventually result in throwing them away.

滨苍蝉迟别补诲,听freeze them and use them at a later date.

Almost any extra ingredient that you have on hand can be frozen and used in the future. The trick is simply knowing聽how聽to freeze the item without damaging it.

For a one-stop shop, She Knows offers聽a great collection of tactics聽for freezing various fresh items. This will handle most of the things you commonly want to freeze.

For rice, I just put about two cups of cooked rice into a quart-sized freezer bag. I expel all of the extra air and flatten the bag for easy stacking. When I want to re-use it, I put a tablespoon of water along with the contents of the bag into a microwave-safe bowl, cover it with a plate, and microwave it for about 30 seconds. Stir it and it works great!

For us, the big key is to聽remember what you鈥檝e frozen. It鈥檚 easy to forget what things you鈥檝e frozen and tossed in the freezer if you do it regularly.

Our solution is to聽label. I usually use masking tape for labels so that I can just peel it off the bag and then reuse the bag for another frozen item after cleaning it.

Another good tactic is to聽keep a list on the front of your freezer聽detailing all of the frozen items that you鈥檒l find in there, which can help a lot when planning meals and preparing a grocery list.

Whenever you throw away a staple food, you鈥檙e throwing away money. If it鈥檚 easy to put that staple food right into the freezer and then pull it out at a later date for a recipe, there鈥檚 no reason not to do it.