We have freezer issues.

So lately I've had some much-needed time around the house. Among other things, I have organized and unpacked the kitchen (it's sad that we've been here since December...), changed the sheets and flipped the mattress, made some inferno-hot soup that won't make it to this blog since it was such a disaster, spent the entirety of an afternoon lounging in the sun on the back porch and finished unpacking all our books in the living room. I also slept in.

And then this past Sunday I addressed the freezer.

We have freezer issues. Like, we hoard food. We have piles of food in our freezer and yet never seem to eat it. Our pantry is almost as bad, but not quite. So I decided to go through and make a list of everything in the freezer in hopes that we could begin cooking our way out of a full freezer. Because Dave is sick of stuff falling out of the freezer when he goes to get ice, and I am sick of buying new food when we have months worth in the freezer!

Here is a partial list (I will spare you the unabridged mostly so I don't have to type it all): roasted butternut squash (pureed from last season's CSA), massive amounts of fried rice left over from a work event (it's kosher, in case you care), asian veggie soup (single serving), almond meal, sweet corn, one piece of french toast I have been eyeing lately since I can't eat it, shrimp, crabmeat, crawfish, beef bones I plan to make stock with, individually sealed tilapia, sweet italian sausage, 1 serving of homemade tomato sauce with veggies, kielbasa, swordfish (just one steak), hot dogs, ground beef (approx 1 lb), tater tots, vanilla ice cream, turkey meatballs (from Trader Joes - I love these!), and approx 4 servings of this tomato, ground turkey, potato concoction that I swear I am going to turn into a lasagna someday.

So the list is now posted on the front of the fridge and moving forward I think we need to commit to something like two meals a week using mainly freezer ingredients. Either that or I will simply ban Dave from purchasing any meat or seafood until we are out of frozen stuff. Those are the items I am most embarrassed about since it just seems excessive to have that much variety of MEAT and SEAFOOD. Really. I'd feel less silly having 6 different kinds of dried beans or three different pastas (which we also have, in the pantry...)

Any thoughts on what to make first? Gumbo comes to my mind...