Before leaving on vacation, I’m taking the opportunity to clean out the fridge. Not much in the fridge will be safe by the time I return and it’s a great opportunity to confront the reality of what’s in my freezer as well.
There wasn’t much in the fridge to start but the foods that I have in my meat and dairy bin are quite old, so I need to review the expiration dates and transfer anything I’d like to keep to the freezer.
Removing items that are too old or I won’t eat:
I started with items in the freezer that I had batched and the last time I used them they tasted off or I had a reaction to them. This included ground sausage, ground beef, shredded chicken, and part of the stir fry I’d made in my last Meal Planning Day 4 post that I had reacted badly to.
Most of these items I’d made prior to implementing the masking tape labeling so I knew they were more than a month old. I don’t know why but I hadn’t labeled the fried rice even though I’d made that after implementing the tape labeling.
Clearing out the refridgerator for Vacation:
The refrigerator section is where I have to be more critical for two reasons. First, I have a mast cell disease and all of it, especially leftover food, gets riskier in the fridge. Second, I’m preparing to be gone for a week. Therefore, anything that is showing signs of going bad is getting pitched. Unfortunately, several of my greens had started going bad on me. The apples also had pits.
You’ll also notice that I had a lot of leftovers in this batch. For some reason, I thought I’d hold onto all the leftover sides and make something new to go with them. I’m not one to snack on foods that are typical side dishes. I also didn’t have anything prepared or on hand to go with them, so they were already too old. Some more than a week.
I also scooped up some items that I knew had expired in my pantry. I tossed the potatoes that were growing roots. It’s a bit extreme but I never should have bought them in the first place. Realistically, I was never going to eat them.
In the small Tupperware bowls, there were prepped ingredients that had expired. I can’t be sure how long ginger and soy sauce can stay in the fridge mixed together but it’s probably not a month. Most often I’ve kept a ridiculously small amount of it in the fridge instead of tossing it.
I did leave a package of broccoli. I typically consume broccoli and I don’t think you can freeze it without blanching. There just wasn’t any time to do that. If it’s bad when I return, at least it’s all contained. I purchased this to make another Beef and Broccoli meal.
Move older items to more visible locations:
I briefly reviewed what was in the freezer for prepared meats. There is a container of pre-cooked bacon that I moved forward. I can chop that up and add it to a breakfast scramble but I know it’s older than one month as well. It could potentially be six months old, which is when I started doing breakfast scrambles. The ground sausage was from the same experimenting, but since I know it bothers my stomach I’m tossing it now.
End Freezer/Fridge Inventory:
When I left, my fridge contained eggs, butter, broccoli, grated parmesan cheese (which I should have transferred to the freezer as well), jelly, 1 yogurt, mayo, and chicken bouillon. The yogurt may not be good when I return but the others should be fine. Some of the eggs were drying up but I’ll find out when I crack them open. I’ve never had one spoil on me.
It’s easy to let my food get too old so I decided to take this opportunity to be ruthless with the food in my fridge and more than normal with what was in the freezer. I typically travel for a week twice a year so this way, nothing in my freezer should become dangerous to me.
I keep the frozen meats up high to help use them timely. Down lower are veggies, flours/grains. Moving forward I may need to move the cheeses up as well. The bin is mixed but the front is cheese. The back is frozen fruit.
Day 2 will be vacation meal planning and shopping. Typically, I would have made the meal plan on the same day that I’m tossing items. This time I can’t do that because I won’t be in my kitchen for the upcoming meal planning and prepping.