My Cleaned-Out Freezer, Gourmet Breakfast, And Cindy Knee

Over the years, I’ve gone on several campaigns to clean out our longer term freezer but I’ve never been as successful as this time and it’s partly due to a new philosophy for freezer use.  This is about as empty as it will get as all of the old items are now out and I was amazed at the stuff that I discovered over the last few months - it’s organized by shelf such as pork and chicken on a shelf or beef and precooked items on a shelf.

The new philosophy is to store the following in the freezer.

1. Items we want to have on hand long term such as a bag of stone ground corn meal.

2. Items we want to have on hand in the short term such as a bag of frozen corn, chicken breast, or hash brown potatoes - items like you would have in your dry pantry to prevent a trip to the store.

3. Foods we buy on sale in larger quantities like a whole pork loin or beef or seafood on sale.

4. Foods we make a longer special trip to buy such as Wurst Kitchen sausages (IL) or Joe Patti’s seafood (FL).

5. Items that we have cooked a big batch of and want to freeze the remainder such as hot dog sauce or vegetable soup.

6. Broths that we make for other cooking such as chicken, beef, and country ham - the bottom basket and part of the door.

7. Seasonal items available only in the summer to save for winter such as local strawberries (I won’t eat those tasteless ones from the grocery store).

Ice cream and partly used open bags of items go in the kitchen freezer - such as tater tots.

Gourmet Brunch

We had some peaches that needed to be used along with some several-days-old sour dough bread and we decided to turn them into French toast for the first time in several years.  We made it for Cindy, Pat, and Bev and I had the leftover focaccia with eggs from the previous post.

We just used our go-to recipe for French Toast and peaches.

For the egg mixture:

4 eggs

1/2 cup of milk

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp vanilla

Dash salt

For the peaches (one peach per serving)

3 ripe peaches

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp brown sugar (more or less to taste)

Handful of blueberries

About ¼ cup chopped pecans

Whipped cream

Directions:

Beat the egg mixture together and soak the bread for five minutes or so per side.

Cook on a griddle in melted butter (forgot the pic).

Melt the butter and brown sugar in a non-stick pan over medium heat and add the peaches – they just need to be warmed thru.

When the bread is flipped add the berries to the pan and stir them in.

Plate the bread and top with the peach mixture, chopped pecans, and a dollop of whipped cream (Bev added more after the pic)

To make it even more gourmet, they had a glass of Asti Spumanti.

The Verdict:

The breakfast was a big hit with my girls.

Cindy Knee Update

From the hospital, Cindy went to a step-down rehab center for several days and it was about a week after we got home from WV before we saw her.  She recently had her follow-up with the surgeon and all is well.  She is much tougher than me and more pain tolerant so she has been pushing herself to rehab the knee and as a result she is doing outstanding in getting back to normal – she has impressed the therapist that comes to the house for her.

Photos can be slightly enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

8/17/25 event date