Cheese!

Cheese was on sale!  The logical thing for me to do was to buy some and process it for future use because this family seems to be in an anti-cheese type mood these days.  Only thing left to do was to shred it and freeze it so we can just pull as needed from the big deep freezer.

(BTW: the sale is over now as you can see by the dates on my baggies but it was $2.99/500gr block of cheese. I picked up 3 blocks: old cheddar, marble & pizza mozzarella.  The deal was too good to pass up!)

Since someone pointed out to me that the pre-shredded cheese you buy at the grocery store has a powdery substance added to it, I have been waiting for a sale on cheese to make my own.   At least I know it’s just cheese.

Tip: to shred your own, chill the blocks for a good hour before shredding, to make it easier on yourself.

While the cheese was chilling, I started prep by labeling my baggies with the amount, type of cheese and date it was frozen.  I used sandwich sized Ziploc’s.

I chose to freeze the cheese in 1c portions as most recipes call for that much if not 2c at a time.  Also, I only use about 1c of cheese when I make homemade pizza 😉  Each 500gr block made bout 6 cups loosely packed.  For some reason my pizza mozzarella only made 5c – maybe it wasn’t as chilled as it should’ve been?

  

Once all the cheese was bagged with the air squished out (remember, air is the enemy in the freezer), I rolled/folded the excess bag over to make lil logs.  I placed all them sandwich bags into a medium sized freezer Ziploc and tried to squeeze all the air outta that bag.

Voila! I now have 17 x 1c portions of cheese ready to be pulled at a moment’s notice. The other bonus, the one freezer Ziploc takes up much less space then one of those pre-shredded cheese bags.

Do you process your own cheese to save money as well?

Food Waste Friday (10/19/12)

This weeks waste…not so minimal if you ask me. 😦

In the pic:
* 1/2 kg plain yoghurt
* sad green pepper
* jar mango chutney
* zucchini seeds (saved for roasting)
* homemade strawberry jam (that was pulled from the freezer)

The yoghurt was pushed to the back of the fridge by – guess who – dad. He told me it was his leftover soup in the “Chinese Tupperware”. That will teach me to listen to him when my ‘spidy senses’ are tingling. Next time I’m opening it to check.

Same story with the zuc seeds…had saved them to see if they roast up the same as pumpkin seeds but they too went MIA.

The mango chutney – have no clue where that came from. Never tried it before so why would I buy it? I suspect it was my sisters doing when she was visiting…you know, trying to give food a chance when she’s gifted something she wouldn’t eat. I know she wouldn’t buy it either *lol*

The jam was an experiment. It was tasty when it was freshly made but something about the texture that just didn’t carry through after freezing. Ick.

The green pepper is self explanatory and the lemon actually was not wasted. Hooray!! I thought it was a goner but it was still good to go so I finished it off last night. I had only used part of it for the juice but there was plenty of juice left in it. Oh, FYI those round Ziploc containers are really airtight!

So, how’d you do this week?

On Friday’s, I share what food items that I have ‘wasted’ by letting spoil during the week from forgetfulness and/or neglect. Kristen over at The Frugal Girl has inspired me to publicly post in hopes of reducing waste. (Food Waste Friday is now being co-hosted every other week with Simply Being Mum – pop on over to take a peek!)