Practical Mardi Gras Challenge #1- What I Fed to the Chickens

In an earlier post, I talked about my personal theory of the origins of Mardi Gras and about how I'm going to use this season as an excuse to clean out my freezer and pantry.

I began my great clean out with our chest freezer. We have a big freezer in our back spare room where we keep meat, dairy products, bread, and produce (keeping it this way allows us to take advantage of sales and clearance when they pop up, and also allows us to only visit certain stores once a month instead of once a week). 

While part of this challenge is to actually consume the random odds and ends of food that I've had forever and just haven't done anything with, some food is just beyond being good for anything but chicken feed. 

In this category in the freezer: 

Exhibit A: frozen cubes of what I think is eggnog.

The holiday cheer is long, long dead here

We'd had this in our freezer for at least two years. I've tried to use some in smoothies and whatnot, but it wasn't very good, and eventually the cubes began forming these weird gummy, dried out, freezer burnt edges. Add that to the fact that you're talking about an item that's pretty much just melted ice cream, meaning it had almost no nutritional value, and it wasn't too hard to get rid of it.

Exhibit B: frozen gallon bags of cooked pumpkin.

I...have nothing to say here.

My husband works at a public school. For some reason, teachers like to spend some of their hard earned money on pumpkins to decorate their classrooms. He came home with them after the holiday season, and I fired up the stove and started processing them.

I actually only fed two of these to the birds. I'd saved about six of these, but two I froze in cooked-in-the-oven chunks instead of a smooth puree. So not only would I have to thaw it, but I'd have to break it down even more before I could actually use it to make something. No idea what I was thinking.  Not worth the hassle, especially when I've got four more gallons of the stuff in an easier to use consistency.

I'm also pretty certain I've had this particular pumpkin for at least two years. 

Uh...thanks boss. I think. 

Items I found in the chest freezer that I'm going to try to use up by Lent (coming soon to a blog near you): 

- a 1 lb chunk of frozen chorizo links

- A Boston butt pork roast (at least a year old) 

- 4 bags of pumpkin puree 

- about a quarter pound of frozen cherries 

- A...LOT of broccoli. An insane amount. 

- Two or three bags of bagels

- Two bags of hamburger buns 

- Several bags of already cooked smoked turkey 

- A bag of frozen ricotta cheese ice cubes

This could get interesting. 

(No drunkenness to report as of yet. Or new kids).