Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Food Storage and Plums

Rhonda Jean at Down to Earth has been posting a series about Simple Living. Yesterday's post was about food storage and it had me thinking about my freezer. It coincided with my utility bills actually. Why am I paying to freeze things when the great outdoor freezer has been on full blast for a few months already??

One reason is because I can easily get at it without freezing myself in the process. However, I have two freezers (one big, one small) and yesterday I emptied the small one into two coolers and put them into the frozen garage. I don't know if it'll make a difference at all in our electricity bill, but it can't hurt. And I found stuff.

My organized freezer is far from organized and I found two things in the past week or so that needed to be used up. One mystery container turned out to be pureed pumpkin from who-knows-when. Lots of it. I made a batch of muffins for a birthday party which disappeared quickly and one loaf of the same recipe. Somehow the loaf isn't as much fun and I've still got it. I think I'll have a slice with some coffee later today.
2 cups of pumpkin puree - any ideas of what to do with it? I could make soup for lunch, I suppose. I don't know what possessed me to freeze 4 cups of it in one container.
The other package was a huge ziplock bag of plums. And they are older than Alice! They weren't discolored or anything so I used them anyway. Maybe there are risks I don't know about, but I'm choosing to live life on the edge here. They tasted great in a plum crisp, and then again yesterday in a "Plum Good Chicken" recipe in the crock pot (I didn't make that up!).
I still have this much left.


Any good recipes out there? I'm plum out of ideas.

I know, I know. I'm sorry.

6 comments:

Rosa said...

No ideas,but there are no risks to eating ancient frozen plums that I know of. . .
And you know how I am about food saftey!!!
lol

Anonymous said...

I just looked at my fresh & whopping Epcor bill for January & figured my freezer contributed about $3.00 to the total.
(28 kWh * 7.784 cent + 1/30 of the variable delivery charge of $6.30). Compare that to the risk of spoiling your frozen stuff by forgetting it in the garage when the temperature hits +5....

Caroline

Re: Plums: Rice pudding with plum compote? (or plum compote with whipping cream, or plum ice cream/granita/gelato)

Evelyn in Canada said...

I think the reason I still had these plums is because I'm not crazy about them. That's definitely making it harder for me.

I'll take my chances on the weather with this small amount of food. The coolers they are in should protect them from the odd blip because the blips never last long enough for a thaw. By the time spring gets closer, I'll have room in my big freezer if there's any food left. Ideally I need to be eating down what's in my freezer and stop adding to it.

Coralee said...

yummy plums! too bad you don't like them! I don't have any recipes that would be too domestic of me, but good for you on getting to the bottom of your freezer... I desperately need to do the same.

Anonymous said...

Plum cake, plum tarts with an almond filling (use puff pastry if you're feeling lazy, stew plums with cinnamon and put on ice cream or oatmeal... I love plums, and have lots in my own freezer that I have to do something with.

Deb

Unknown said...

Mom often made an upside down cake with plums on the bottom/top: just regular cake, with the plums in the bottom with sugary syrup (what they were canned in, I expect) ... delicious.

Or, you could just blender them up in your Miracle Thingamie with some yogourt and milk and honey and have a shake. :)