My project is moving along nicely.  Last night, I was able to finish re-filling the cleaned freezer from last week and empty another one in the process.  I found these berries from ’13 and ’14 (pretty icy and old), this mystery green soup (?) and those chicken thighs that look pretty freezer-burned.  Today, I will serve the green stuff for lunch, make berry crisp for the weekend helpers that are coming to assist us with sorting and moving loads to storage, and see if the chicken is salvageable.  I found some terriyake marinade in the fridge that I can dump on the chicken if it looks save-able and hopefully kill any off taste.

So, now, another freezer has been standing empty, thawing out, all night, and I will wipe it out and turn it back on this morning.  Then, I will start filling it up from another freezer, and so forth, until I have done them all.  I’d like to do one per weekend, until I’m done.  I should have an empty one to not turn back on at the end, but we do have pigs almost ready to butcher, so, I guess we’d better keep eating if I want that to happen.  I am pretty determined to not move or keep quite so many freezers.

This is my garage fridge, nicely cleaned and sorted out by Patsy (with assistance) last evening.  She was in a cleaning mood.  I’m not one to argue with that, so while I worked on the freezer, I showed her how to remove everything, and wipe up the mess that was in there.  It was pretty bad, as this has been an extra fridge for us, and has been used for stuffing all of the bulk purchases, garden produce, etc.  Some jam had spilled all over the shelf, and she got it cleaned up.  There were other piles of yucky sticky stuff in other places, including under the drawers.  We both scrubbed part of it, but she sure did a lot.  I’m proud of her.  Now that my house fridge is broken, I wanted this one cleaned out to maximize it’s usefulness, since it is my main fridge now.  The one in the house is cool, so I am using it for lettuce, ketchup, etc.  Things like meat, milk, leftovers, etc. are going out in this one.  So handy, I know, trotting back and forth:)  The plan is to bring this one in, but we are so overwhelmed with the sorting/packing/storing things for the move, we just haven’t done it yet. So, between things from the back of this fridge, and some really old stuff from the freezer, we got a good-sized bucket of slop for the pigs, a freezer that will be ready to re-fill this morning, and a nicely-cleaned and organized fridge.   A little girl got a good lesson on how to clean a fridge, and that’s worth a lot to me, as well.

Food items I have used this past week include:  frozen fish, green beans, drinks I found while cleaning the garage, the items in the picture above, canned pears, canned potatoes, some bacon that was frozen and looking old (but was fine), and leftovers (quite a few).  We also got quite a bit of bread out of the freezers.  Rob served it for meals, and I threw some of the really bad stuff in the pig bucket I was filling.  When we are given bread, I put it in the freezer, but sometimes we don’t eat it all.  I’m not out anything, as it was free.  I was also ruthless with bowls of ???? that I found lurking in there. If it looked freezer-burned, I threw it into the pig bucket.  I’m sure somewhere in the past, I thought I’d want that leftover, but that time is past.  Now, I know that these freezers will be in relatives’ garages in-between houses, so I want to keep meat, produce, and frozen cheese and butter as my top priorities.  I still have a tremendous amount of meat to deal with, and want every bit of it, as we will not have the opportunity to raise our own meat again for a while, at least.

I had the cutest wood hauler carry wood for me on Monday!  He only charged me a few meals.  What a deal!  So frugal–he doesn’t even eat much!  He was so proud to carry such a big load.  When he was very little, he would carry one stick of kindling at a time–so had me load him up as much as I could now that he’s “big.”  After one look at my garage, with its towering stacks of boxes, which must look like skyscrapers to one so short, he informed me that the only reason he was going into that garage was to haul wood, because he always did that!  It was cute.  We only had Jake and Michaela (niece and nephew) for one night, since they didn’t have school on Monday.  Their mom and sister were visiting their oldest daughter at college, and their dad had to work.  So did I.  So, after a fun evening, I went off to work Monday morning and Rob and 4 kids had a blast.  We won’t talk about how frugal that wasn’t–they went to the movies and McDonald’s–thankfully our brother-in-law had a pretty good movie gift card to throw Rob’s way.  Apparently Rob fell asleep during the movie, and was poked awake by one of the kids and told to wake up and pay attention:)    I guess he was worn out by then.  Then they came back to the house and built Legos together until I got home and we all ate dinner.  Then, he and Ja’Ana took them home and stayed there until their daddy got home.

Patsy’s 4H horticulture leader helped her start a spider plant in water a few weeks ago.  This past Friday, she helped her plant it into soil because it had a lot of roots.  She’s looking forward to growing it.

I boiled up a huge bag of turkey bones that were in the freezer and made quite a bit of broth.  Some I froze and some I made into turkey-rice soup right away.  I put in more rice than I thought on accident, so it’s more like turkey and rice–not so much soup, but it is great.  I didn’t want to can this batch of broth because I was simply out of energy and time, so hopefully I will use up the broth quickly.  Lovana did use up a bunch in chicken chili verde on Thursday.

I’m still using lots of onions from our garden.  They are one of the easiest garden items to store.  I just dry them well after pulling and washing, and then store them in a cool place.  The main bulk of them are on screens in the shop, and a small box-full is brought into the garage for immediate use.

I followed my $50/week grocery budget.  I’ve spent only $16 this week so far, and got mayonnaise for $2.50 jar (I got 2), and a few other things I needed.  Rob spent $3 on a gallon of milk.  So, the $31 will carry over until next week.

I continued to run back and forth from the garage to the kitchen, using the garage fridge for more perishable items.  The kitchen one is broken, and only keeps things cool(ish)–not cold enough for meat, etc.  I don’t want to buy another one now.

In my packing and sorting, I found a piano music book that I did not know I had that Ja’Ana is enjoying playing from.

We sold a few more items on e-bay.  My bank account is up to around $850 now for fixing up the new house.  I was able to save a bit extra and put it into that account as well,  for later–only $25—but every bit helps.  That’s the second time, so it’s an extra $50 I know I will love to have later.

As you can see, someone had left this freezer cracked open one day after removing some coveted corn dogs.  When I found that it was actually cracked open, and starting to thaw out, I was able to save almost all of the food because I caught the problem in time.  However, it iced up badly when it was re-freezing.

A main goal of my use-it-up project is to empty out one of my many freezers.   Clearly, this one was the one that got targeted first.  This past week, I was finally able to empty the rest of the items.  We have eaten food from all of the freezers, so I simply took the remaining items out of this one and put them into the spaces in the other freezers.  For the first time I can remember, I was able to simply open the door, turn off the freezer, put towels in the bottom to catch the water from the melting ice, and leave it overnight.  I did make a pot of broth and put it in there while hot to both cool the broth and melt more ice, but otherwise let nature take its course.   Easiest freezer cleaning EVER!  The next morning, I just wiped it out and started to transfer items over from other freezers to re-fill it.  I will work on emptying another one, cleaning it, sorting and organizing every item inside, and so on until they are all done.

Items I used this past week:

Several loaves of frozen bread and buns that were given to us a while back, and I froze them.  I am only accepting 1-2 loaves at a time from now on until after we move so I can keep the freezers down.  There are at least 8 loaves still in there and they need to be used.

One huge-2 gallon bag of turkey bones from when we butchered last.  I made into broth.  I actually froze several containers of broth, but also used quite a bit, so space was gained.

A 10 pound bag of chicken thighs and drumsticks I got on $5 Friday a while back.  We ate chicken at least 3 times this past week.

Home-canned jars of tomatoes, green beans, fruit cocktail, peaches, applesauce, salsa,  jam and pickles, plus whatever I forgot.

Frozen blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, some shrimp that was starting to look freezer-burned but turned out great, a piece of fish (also suspect but turned out fine), frozen white beans, frozen turkey bits (I REALLY wasn’t sure about some of that–looked pretty bad, but the girls have been chowing it down in quesadillas daily-whew–and Lovana also made white bean chili from it and the frozen beans and some broth)

Many, many pantry and food items were used for 4H club last Friday.  I purposely chose recipes that would use my stockpile items.  Those included several cans of beans, broth, lentils, a whole chicken (I gave them a lesson on how to cut it up in that class, then they cooked it),  and many more.  I had to buy potatoes and a few other things. I had 9 recipes going in the 3 hours (Rob did 2 outside at one point)–it’s a bit chaotic, but super fun and a great learning experience.  We did use an entire 2-lb loaf of Tillamook cheese that day-haven’t done that for a while:)

I had to throw away a little package of sausage.  It was awful.  You could smell the freezer burn from across the room.  I’m glad it’s gone.  Overall, I’m delighted with this week’s progress.