The Freezer is FULL

Funny About Money posted a meatloaf recipe today that had me thinking wistfully of my sweetie's meatloaf (she uses ground beef, onion, and saltine crackers, and slathers a mixture of ketchup and brown sugar on top). It's sweet, smoky, savory... and great comfort food for the colder months. I should definitely ask her to make it. But it will have to wait, because there is no more room in our freezer!


Over the past two weekends, we have made the following:

• burritos with pulled pork, rice, and cheese
• burritos with beans, rice, and cheese
• vegetarian bean chili
• chicken & rice casserole
• chicken soup with rice noodles
• beef stew
• veggie beef soup
• creamy potato/carrot soup (that I just plain don't like but my sweetie thankfully finds palatable with some add-ons like pepper and cheese)
• beans & greens soup (with Lima beans and great Northern white beans, mustard greens, and kale; one batch had some diced ham and one stayed veggie with some red chard thrown in)
• spaghetti sauce (added ground beef and veggies to store-brand jarred sauce)
• cheese and spinach stuffed shells
• pumpkin bread and muffins (the quick recipe with canned pumpkin and yellow cake mix isn't actually very good, but I see room for tinkering)
• corn muffins

We've used a pork shoulder, a beef roast, and some chopped spinach from our freezer, and replaced them with Pyrex casseroles, Tupperware, and Ziploc bags full of comfort food!

(Oh, and there's some bags of chopped onion in there, and a bag of odds and ends to eventually make some vegetable stock. The berries were already there; the fistful of Halloween candy is new. And if we use up that leftover lamb curry sauce, we'll have room for another single-serving container of soup.)

This is pretty much packed to capacity, and there's also a couple of days' worth of meals hanging out in the fridge right now. So it's time to take a break from bulk cooking! One day, when we have a chest freezer, we'll be able to store a month's worth of meals (or more) and not have to worry about the Yeti wrath crashing down on us in an avalanche when we open the freezer door. One day, when I ask my beloved to make meatloaf, she will make two -- one to eat for dinner and for lunch leftovers, and one for the freezer -- and there will be frozen peas or green beans at hand. But that day is not today.