Using Up

One of my knitting challenges for this year is to knit 6 sweaters and I have decided that they need to be from my stash. That would be a good thing. I still have not finished my Knitting Olympics project, but the yarn did come from my stash. It is a lime green cotton and it was a gift from a friend. I did buy some yarn recently at my Local Yarn Shop (LYS), on sale, to go with some yarn I all ready had. Now there is enough for a sweater. The yarn I had was a grey silk with glass beads on it and the new yarn is a variegated gray silk by the same company but it has some shades of turquoise in it.

The other stash I want to burn through some is the freezers, yes multiple. I have a large freezer in the garage and two small freezers attached to the two fridges I have. Can you be a hoarder of food? We put 90 pounds of blueberries in the freezer every year for Bill's breakfast smoothies. Then I have maybe 15 quarts of lemon juice in there also. Every time I go to California and my Aunt Jeanne's trees have fruit, I squeeze as much juice as I can, put it in quart Ziploc bags and freeze it and bring it home with me. She has a Meyer Lemon tree and the juice is delicious. I make lemon bars now and then but mostly it is about Greek food; lemon chicken, lemon potatoes, lemon soup, lemon rice and oh, did I mention lemon drops. I also stock up on brisket. When I go to Texas I buy, freeze and bring home smoked brisket. It is delicious and I have never found anything like it in the Pacific Northwest. I think the biggest problem is that when I cook I have a tendency to cook big which often results in leftovers and I freeze them and that is the part I need to use up, but I don't want to use them too soon from the first time in case they feel too much like leftovers. Right now I know there is Chicken chili, Vegetable stew, Tomato and Rice soup, Shepherd's Pie, and last night I put a container of Turkey Masala and Curried Potatoes in there. There is still two packages of ham from Christmas and some roasted chicken. I usually buy 2 or 3 roasted chickens at Costco and pull the meat off the bones and package it in usable portions. The last time I was at Costco I noticed they are selling the packaged meat all ready pulled off the bones for you. How nice. I almost bought some and then I put it back because I didn't want to put it in the freezer.