Although I’ve written about freezing foods in the past, I feel it’s necessary to bring it up again with the cool season approaching. Freezing has the potential to save on your budget, but you always have to be on the lookout for what is available. Shopping the sales, using coupons, and preparing home cooked meals nets us tremendous savings, but figuring out what to do with the these items once we return home is where we will see the savings.

We all have in our mind or in our price book our ideal maximum price we would like to pay for an item. Once the item finally goes on sale and it’s at just the right price we pounce on it like a wild animal searching out its prey.

The key to using your freezer is to chop up vegetables for particular dishes or vegetables you know you use on a regular basis or that will enable you to make a variety of meals. Find these items on sale and then get to work with your cutting board, a good sharp knife, and of course high quality freezer bags.

• Red onions. Diced red onions are a great base for marinara sauce, tasty in omelets or quiches, and good for sauteeing to use in just about any dish.
• White onions. Diced white onions are a great starter for any meal and having these frozen enables you to quick-start most meals without the standard prep work. Put some butter or olive oil in a pan, grab your bag of pre-diced onions and you are on your way. Throw some of these in a crockpot with some salt, pepper, beans, and water and 8 hours later you’ve got something to eat.
• Mirepoix. Diced celery, carrots, and onions will be a good starter for any soup, stew, gumbo, or even an Italian dish. Having this in bags will start meals in minutes.
• Parsley. I chop parsley, both curly and flat leaf, and freeze it on a regular basis because we can just grab it and we’ve got an immediate tasty garnish.
• Turnips and Parsnips. We’re now getting into a different area. These are strong root vegetables that our family just started eating occasionally in the past few years after seeing a number of cooks use them on the Food Network. It’s hard to find these on sale in our area.
• Green and Red Peppers. We chop these up for use in rice dishes, omelets, Italian sauces, chili, and the list goes on and on.

Using your eagle eye to find these items on sale and then taking initiative to dice, chop, and bag them will not only save you money, but it will also give you a big variety of vegetables to use to start quick meals. For most people, the main hurdle to cooking is that they just don’t feel like it when they come home from work. On my husband’s nights to cook, sometimes he just looks in the freezer and gets an idea. I do the same. The season is coming up for comfort foods and all of these vegetables are good starter kits.