I grew up with a grandma who have a very impressive pantry. Her canning collection was enormous, although sometimes digging into it felt like an archaeological investigation. Her freezer stash was equally impressive. Little containers labelled with dates and contents: would that I were so organized.
But what was most impressive was the weird things she liked to freeze. Her freezer wasn’t just full of berries – it was also full of all sorts of oddball items that would make you raise your eyebrows.
In the spirit, here are some weird items that you too can freeze:
1. Cheese. Yes, you can freeze it. If you get cheese in bulk, you can freeze it for a rainy, cheeseless day. It’s not great for sandwiches afterwards, but it is good for pizza and other items that use melted cheese. When you remove the cheese from the fridge and thaw it, it crumbles instead of shredding and slicing.
2. Bread bits. You know that you can freeze bread. My grandma would freeze breadcrumbs and ends to use in bread pudding or breadcrumbs. Because why would you buy breadcrumbs if you had a perfectly good batch in your freezer?
3. Ice cube trays with other items in them. I’ve used ice cube holders to create little cubes of frozen baby food. I’ve also used them to freeze herbs in olive oil, saving them for the winter. You can also freeze leftover wine in cubes so you can use it as seasoning later on. Or how about a litlte bit of coffee so you can melt it in your hot cocoa and make a mocha?
4. Zucchini. You can put a lot of vegetables into the freezer, although you might need to blanch them first. I like storing blanched beans and beets in the freezer, for example. But the zucchini I store for more nefarious purposes. I store grated zucchini so I can sneak it into winter baking.
5. Grains. I belong to a flour share, which means I have a LOT of flour around the house. I store it in the freezer once my berry supply gets a little low, and it keeps it fresh.
What weird things have you put in your freezer?