<p>A small upright freezer was delivered to my basement this morning. I have been struggling for years with the small freezer capacity of my refrigerator. Now that I have more space, I plan to take advantage of it by cooking large quantities of some of our favorite recipes and freezing. </p>
<p>Is anyone doing this? What are you using for containers? I have been moving away from plastic and use tempered glass containers with snap-on lids for most food storage now, but I don’t have enough. They are fairly expensive to buy, though. Maybe I should use pyrex?</p>
<p>There are a number of things that I will do in bulk, including eggplant or chicken parm, sausage and peppers, ribs. I’m usually talking 12-15 pounds, sometimes 20 of the main meat, and I do all my oven work in the disposal aluminum roasting pans, which saves a tremendous amount of pan clean up. I don’t have kitchen lackies, I AM the lackey, as well as the cook.</p>
<p>The best thing I’ve found are the different sized aluminum containers, with the paper or foil lids that are hand crimped. I’ve had great luck at a number of local dollar stores, buying them very reasonably. They come in a multitude of size, and I do portion control based on how I plan to use the items. Most of my reheat is in the oven, not microwave, so the aluminum is not a problem. </p>
<p>I’ve also found that the plastic container/lid combo that our two favorite chinese restaurants use for take out work great as well, (for a serving size of 1-2), and these are microwave ready.</p>
<p>I also supplied both kids at school with both (filled) versions at various times with a few of their “dad’s specials”.</p>
<p>I’ve also used pyrex, but don’t have enough to relegate them to the freezer for the duration. I will use it for a meal that’s short term frozen, and needs a “presentable” oven to table delivery.</p>
<p>I use the Gladware containers from Target, I buy them after a holiday for 50% off…I don’t care about the pattern. I will say the gold fleck ones I bought don’t get used often, they make the food look an odd color. But the Halloween ones get used all the time. </p>
<p>I also use freezer Ziploc bags for a lot of things…soup base (especially the Chicken Tortilla Soup D loves), pasta sauce, basil (it changes color, but the flavor is great), sausage and peppers (freeze on a cookie sheet, then stack). I either stack the bags or stand them up like books. Sharpie marker works great for writing on them</p>