FoodSaver Uses
When Brad and I got married, a friend gave us a Foodsaver as a wedding gift. At first, we just used it sparingly. Over time we starting using it almost daily. We now have a freezer full of meals and meat, and our grocery bill is extremely low. I wanted to share five great uses for the Foodsaver.
1. Prevent leftovers going to waste - I despise most leftovers. So when Brad and I got married, we realized we were throwing away so much food because of this. I just am not a fan of eating things repeatedly. I don't mind reheating things, but I don't want veggie soup 5 days straight. For us, this is one of the biggest, and first, things we solved. Now, whenever we cook a meal, if there are any leftovers, we Foodsaver them.
Whether it is just the two of us or we have company over, we rarely waste food. There are a few exceptions to this. One, if is something super cheap, it is not worth the cost of the bag to save it. For instance, Kraft Mac and Cheese is around $1 a box. Even if you factor in the cost of the milk and butter you add, it is still not worth the cost of the bag to save it. Instead we put it in a Tupperware dish and Brad eats it later. Two, if it is something I like to eat leftover. I love eating leftover pizza. So I am not going to Foodsaver leftover pizza. Three, if it just doesn't seem like it would be good leftover from the freezer. I would never Foodsaver leftover salad. Now they do make special attachments where you can Foodsaver salads in a jar and eat them, but you do not freeze those things.
Our collection one day while sorting.
2. Pre-make breakfast and lunch - We purchased the perforated bags back in January. Brad went out of town for two weeks for work, so during that time, I made a lot of meals and placed them in individual servings for lunch. I did the same thing when he was out of town in February but for breakfasts. I made things easy that didn't require anything other than the food in the bag. So things like veggie soup, spaghetti, chicken spaghetti, and chicken and rice meals. For breakfast I made breakfast casseroles, muffins, pre-portioned fruit for smoothies, and pancakes. For lunches, we can get up in the morning and carry the lunch frozen to work. We just let it thaw in our lunch box and heat it up at lunch. For breakfast, I sit it in the fridge the night before for thawing. The breakfast food has to be somewhat thought out, but lunches you can decide the morning of if you wish.
3. Store holiday leftovers much longer - During the holidays, we took our Foodsaver with us to our family's house. Most people store leftovers in the fridge and eat on them for a few days, ultimately throwing out a lot and swearing off dressing for a year. Well to fix that, we decided to take all the leftovers home with us. We kept enough for lunch the next day in the fridge, but we Foodsavered the rest. It made a nice meal a month later.
4. Gift of meals - About two months ago, Brad's mom had surgery on her hand. This surgery would prohibit her from being able to really use that hand for awhile. Brad and I thought it would be nice to pre-cook some meals for her and give it to her as a get well soon gift. A month before her surgery we made some spaghetti and chicken spaghetti as meals that they could pull out whenever they needed them. We gave the meals to them frozen along with anything else needed such as the noodles for the spaghetti. This would also probably be a good idea for new parents. It takes far less time and energy to heat up a frozen meal rather than make it from scratch. And this keeps them from eating out all the time.
5. Buy meats in bulk - We have a Costco membership, so we like to buy some things in bulk to save money. One of those things are meats. We always do this for ground beef. We will buy about 6-7 pounds worth of ground beef and come home to measure into 1 pound portions to freeze. We have also done this with pork chops and sausage. The meat is really good quality and it saves quite a bit of money for us.
