To prove I’m a thoroughly domesticated house husband, I’m helping SWMBO defrost the deep freeze today. We’ve are both proponents of stocking up on food items, the deep freeze is a central tool in that effort.
What bothers me is the amount of food that we discarded today; the ravages of freezer burn are not a pretty sight. Our problem is one of self-delusional invincibility, we toss things into the freezer, and promptly forget what we have there, and how long we’ve had the item.
What we need is a freezer inventory system, so we know what we have, how long we’ve had it, and when we should eat it. It might be something as simple as marking the item’s wrapper with a “date acquired” or “use by date” label. And, we need to have the stored items better organized in the freezer, so we can quickly inventory what items we have on hand. This may be as simple as a list affixed to the freezer door.
I don’t know what the best system is, or what tools we need, but wasting food bothers me.
In the meantime, we’re watching ice melt.
-k-
How about one of those magnetic notepads for refrigerators? You mark the ziploc bag with the date then write the item and date on the notepad. At that point you have an at-a-glance inventory on the outside of the freezer and a way of identifying what it is you are looking for (i.e. ground beef frozen on 12/9).
After that all you need is discipline, which is the scarcest of commodities (and one I only occasionally possess).
Keeping in the “True Geek” fashion, I vote for an RFID system that updates a database on the MAC and sends email / text message updates : )
LOL, I like that one better. I can see the email updates now:
WARNING: Meatloaf is now 90 days old. Fish you caught that was barely worth cleaning is now 1 year old. Those Tater Tots are now 2 years old. Please discard the broccoli.
Rusty, welcome aboard, dude! Come back anytime; we never close.
The neat thing about blogging is that you never know what posts will attract what type of comments. I’ll be chuckling about this one for a long time.
James, I don’t know if this makes me a Republican or not, but George HW Bush and I share a dislike of broccoli.
-k-