For myself I have identified several core principles towards managing our food stock:

• there should be a variety – I like to experiment, I like trying new things and new food combinations, so there should be diverse ingredients;
• my freezer should always be as full as possible! And freezer is my best friend in general – I’ll talk about it in a bit more detail further.
• as less waste as possible – if there are leftovers they have to be if possible integrated in a new dish. For example, when one of these days I had a bit of boiled rice, unfinished steak, a bit of broccoli left from our dinner the day before, and some old but not yet bad cheese – all that was “recycled” or better “up-cycled” into a nice lunch: just put everything together, add eggs, some spices, a bit of cream and put in the oven for about 10 minutes. Serve with some toasts. Done.

In this post I would like to talk about frozen food. For me this is a perfect way how to increase my efficiency in the kitchen without sacrificing the important aspect of having a variety in food. I must admit that I switched to using my freezer to the full capacity not that long ago. Before that I only had some pizza’s, ice-cream and ice cubes lying there. Nowadays, there is everything from steaks to chicken breasts, at least five if not more different vegetable varieties at all times and slices of bread in small sealed packs. And it is so convenient!

I will start with bread. When I am not baking bread myself (and I do that occassionally) we buy bread at a local bakery. It is very tasty once fresh and stays being so for another day after the purchase. The problem is that the loaf of bread in our household is usually not finished completely in these two days, and I am too lazy to take out a toaster on the third day. So what I do nowadays is buy two loafs of bread, divide them in three or four “sets” and immediately after purchase put everything but one “set” in sealed plastic bags in the freezer. Defrosted at a room temperature in about 3 hours this bread has all the properties of the freshly bought including a soft inside and a crusty crust.

For vegetables I have it all – I grow my own vegetables (zucchini’s, tomatoes, broccoli, etc); I buy fresh vegetables at the farmer’s market and I have a selection of frozen vegetables in my freezer. To note, that frozen vegetables usually contain more vitamins than supposedly fresh products from the supermarket. How come? Well, they are harvested at optimum ripeness; there is usually a short path and fast processing after harvest; they are stored at about -25C and at such temperature e.g. green beans lose only 20% of its original Vitamin C content within a year. In comparison, since Vitamin C is heat and oxygen sensitive already within the first 4 days in the chilled environment the same green beans would lose more than 60% of their original Vitamin C content. That gets even more dramatic if the green beans are stored at room temperature, as the lost Vitamin C value spikes to 80%. So the bottom line is that actually deep-frozen vegetables are far better than their “fresh” counterparts. Of course, that does not apply to home-grown vegetables, but I want to have broccoli also in February!

With respect to frozen meats, fish and poultry there are almost no vitamin and mineral loses because protein, vitamins A and D and minerals are not affected by freezing. Some claim that the taste for instance in a steak, is lost, but I disagree. Actually, chemically speaking, deep-freezing and subsequent defrosting should make meat more tender. Yet, as mentioned I do not really see the difference in the end result. Maybe I am just good at cooking? (LOL) I must admit, that also here I do buy fresh meats and fresh fish, but most of the times my main course comes from my freezer.

Additionally, my freezer has some fresh herbs frozen in olive oil, the leftovers of wine for subsequent cooking, a couple of ready-made deep-frozen dishes like moussaka and lasagna for those rare times when I get too lazy to cook.

What do I gain by this approach? In addition to variety and freshness, also – a choice. I like the freedom to open my freezer and decide right there on the spot if I want to have a duck breast or a beef steak or a pork tenderloin or a salmon fillet, instead of going to the shop everyday or other and buying them fresh.

I save time and gain choice.