Just a quick note… Last summer at some point I read about some unusual (to me) things that people keep in their freezers. Potato chips. Marshmallows. And a few others I don’t remember…but the marshmallows stuck in my mind. I had bought an outside fire pit with some birthday money and we had really enjoyed it last summer. Sitting outside on summer nights, with the grownups drinking a glass of wine while the fire warmed us and the kids waited eagerly for coals became a tradition. The girls and their friends quickly glommed on to the fact that they should remind us to start the fire early enough to make good coals for roasting marshmallows. And if we had graham crackers and chocolate, ‘smores were high on the list of featured treats!
I did remember to put the fire pit in the shed so it was sheltered from the rain this winter. I saw it there when I pulled out the rototiller to get the vegetable garden ready a few weeks ago. The girls were all ready right then and there to start a fire and roast marshmallows again. And it reminded me that I wanted to pass along this tip. Unless you can easily eat a bag of marshmallows up in a couple of weeks, you’re probably going to find a bag in your pantry of melted together lumps of sugar at some point. Yes, you can pry them apart, sort of.
At some point late last summer I threw a bag into the freezer to test out the tip I’d read. I pulled the bag out periodically this past winter to add to some hot chocolate. It was so easy to pull out the bag, pull out a marshmallow or two. (Or three. We like marshmallows in hot chocolate!) So rather than tossing out gross old stuck-together marshmallows we’ve managed to just continue using up the one bag we bought.
So throw that bag of marshmallows in the freezer and just pull out what you need, when you need it.
I’d be curious about what others have frozen that allows them avoid throwing away food.
i love to roast marshmallows on open fire, they taste great`-;
i like to fry marshmallow in an open fire, they taste really great.,’-
great post hope to see some additional comments next Monday…kisses 😉
This isn’t really a FOODIE money-saving tip, but whenever I need fresh lemon juice, I will juice the lemon and then put the spent lemon in the freezer (I have a bunch of them in a freezer bag).
Then, whenever my sink starts to smell a little…STALE…, I pull out a frozen lemon half (or I just pry off the biggest piece I can from the frozen lemon-lump!), run some water over it, and grind it up in the garbage disposal.
Sometimes, I will zest the lemon before freezing, and freeze the zest separately for use in recipes…the pulp and rind left on the lemon after zesting is still enough to give the sink a fresh lemoney smell!
When I roast a chicken, I never toss out the carcass–it always goes into the freezer so that I can make stock from it another time.
Cranberries do wonderfully well in the freezer. Since the fresh ones are only available around Thanksgiving, I like to stock up, put them on a (rimmed) baking sheet, and stick the sheet in the freezer. When the cranberries are frozen, I just dump them in a plastic bag and use them as needed.
I freeze the leftover veggie bits that I would put into a stock likethe green leek tops, or mushroom trimmimngs, the parmesan cheese rind and so on.
When I am ready to make soup, I just pull out some of the veggies from the freezer, add an onion, peppercorns, and a bay leaf and i can have veggie stock, chicken stock, or beef stock
hi ellen! grapes. for some reason i can’t finish a bunch of grapes before they get all withered, so i throw ’em in the freezer. they are fantastic frozen–like little sorbet bombs.
Hi,
My husband doesn’t like onions much but I have always started supper by chopping a whole onion, throwing it in the pan and then say “What shall I fix?” I got a nice(?) surprise one day, he had been to the farmers market and bought a big bag of onions. (He loves a bargain if not onions.) I realized they were seconds and would go bad soon so I chopped and froze half of them. You can just throw them in your dish – they will disappear but the flavor is good. I tried another way too. I roasted some in oil and froze them afterward. Anyone have experience with that? CG