Can I Freeze It?

It's my new question to myself.

Sound odd?  Or maybe perfectly normal if you are good at using your freezer!

Having stupidly wasted half a cabbage or left citrus fruit until the skin has gone rock hard....I decided to do better!

As I said in my low fat fishcake post,before I buy new bread I clear all the odd bits like crusts and half rolls (!) and freeze it.

This slice of thrift has spread to other food.

The other day I only used a quarter of a white cabbage.  I promptly got out 3 freezer bags and sliced the other 3 quarters and popped them straight into the freezer.

This last weekend we used one of the bags, straight from the freezer into boiling water, and to be honest, I had forgotten it was the frozen cabbage as it tasted great!

I've also done it with red cabbage.  As I'm the only one who likes it at all, I get one the cheapest way (so usually whole no matter how small) and my recipe of choice is to braise it in balsamic vinegar and brown sugar (it's dreamy like that with mash!).  But inevitably there is only so much of this I can eat, well, that's not strictly true!  There are only so many things it goes with!

I'm also doing better with my citrus fruit.  It started with lemons and limes in the bottom of the fridge, one had been zested and the others were getting a hard dry skin.  Instead of wasting I cut them in into little triangles and into a freezer bag in the freezer and I use them to plop in my evening drink.

Last nights offering was a spritzer made with Lidl's Australian Chardonnay Colombard, it has a wonderful zesty zing on the end, just perfect for keeping chilled with a wedge or 2 of frozen lemon.....mmmmmmmm!

I have a fruit bowl of oranges that everyone turns their nose up at and there's only so many oranges a woman can eat!  Those were next on my list, they'd be great in the kids cordial or in a Pimms come the summer.

Take a look at this SAD specimen.......

The skin was ROCK hard, I could hardly get the knife through it!

But look at the inside........

Look at all that juice!

Little Lady saw me and asked to suck a wedge....and it got me to thinking.....I could juice these too!

So out came the old fashioned glass juicer (no fancy kit here!) and away I went!

Little Lady got to the glass before I could photograph a full glass from about 6 oranges!

So here's the messy aftermath and a little juice in the bottom of the glass for me!

You can see how juicy they were.  I'm amazed!

Jen at My Make Do and Mend Year would be proud of me, I'm sure.

Do you know, we love stir fry, I think I might shred odd bits like ends of peppers, odd spring onions and get a 'Stir Fry' freezer bag going! Spring greens, ribbons of carrot....it's all worth a try.

And now I can see the bottom of the fruit bowl I have found a stray banana!  I need 3 to make muffins so I'm going to freeze that one until I have 2 more!

I'm on a roll!!

See what happens when you start?!

How do you avoid waste? Got any more tips or ideas on avoiding food waste?

Back soon with more bits and bobs, until then,
take care,
Nora
xxxx