Starbucks Unwrapped: Delving into the World of Factory-Made Bakery Delights

Brownie on wheels... how far does it come?

I'm up super early most mornings and usually zip off to Starbucks for 5:30 am. Yep, they are open early! Most of them. I grab my tea and unpack my office gear at a table and start happily blogging or writing or organizing my to-do list. Until the delivery guys come.

The Gordon Foods delivery trucks usually arrive shortly after the cafe opens and they trundle in mountains of boxes and oodles of milk jug crates. A lot of the delivery drivers like to leave the doors of the store open, because it's more convenient for them. But there can be loooonnnggg gaps while they are in the back, unloading things into the refrigerators, or in their truck, loading stuff up on the hand-cart... while I am sitting there, freezing my knees off.

Then come the boxes of soy milk, coconut milk, oat milk and yak milk (kidding on that last one).

A delivery of food boxes at Starbucks

Plus many, many boxes of baked goods. Croissants, breakfast sandwiches, brownies - all in cardboard boxes. 

Which got me thinking... as I sat there, shivering... exactly where do these tasty things come from?

It's quite unlikely that they come from a local bakery. If you walk into a Starbucks in Vancouver or London or Bangkok and order a double-chocolate brownie... odds are the brownie will look and taste identical. Sooo where do they come from?

I actually emailed Starbucks to ask them and got some standard boiler-plate email which basically said nothing. Apparently it's a proprietary secret. So I did some more digging...

Ready? Brace yourself. Cause it's not pretty.

Tracking the Brownie

There's my brownie!!
(Well, a demo version of it...)

Let's backtrack first... So there's that chocolate brownie sitting in the Starbucks display case. It used to be that Starbucks had several of each item displayed. So you might see 5 brownies sitting there, and 5 coffee cake slices, etc. But those days are gone, at least in our Starbucks. Nowadays, in order to reduce food waste, I only see a "demo" brownie in the display case (along with other single bakery items). And the breakfast sandwiches don't have demo models (can you imagine... that sitting out all day??).

That single brownie is for display purposes only. It is never sold but tossed at the end of the day. Apparently the food in the display case smells quite funky and sour by the end of the day soooo, no... you don't want to eat that brownie. (Newsweek article on barsitas cleaning out the display case - don't even get me started on this...)

So, you order your brownie, and the barista will reach into an under-the-counter cooler and pull it out. It is individually wrapped in plastic and she/he will then unwrap it, put it on a piece of paper and heat it in the oven for 20 seconds (ALWAYS get your brownie warmed up - sooooo much better) They will then toss that little piece of paper as they slip the brownie into a little paper bag for you (or a plate if you ask for it). Yes, I know... that's three disposable wrappers... ugh.

Baskets of individually wrapped sandwiches &
baked goods at Starbucks.

So how did the brownie get into the behind-the-counter cooler? Well, in the mornings (bright and early), the baristas re-fill the behind-the-counter coolers from the big freezers behind the scenes. They have yellow plastic trays and they will pull out all of the baked goods that they think they will need - 10 of this, 12 of this, 12 of that. Those yellow plastic trays might sit out for a bit, possibly thawing. And how did they get into the behind-the-scenes freezers? From those cardboard boxes that Gordon Foods delivers.

Now the trail gets murky... Gordon Foods gets them from somewhere. But where? This is where some internet research yielded the answer...

Your chocolate brownie, or breakfast sandwich or lemon loaf cake are all made in a massive factory by a Canadian company called Premium Brands. Where is this factory? Could be in Columbus (OH), Reno (NV) or Phoenix (AZ). Here in Canada... it could be Edmonton or Montreal. Does it matter? Not really... it's certainly NOT a 100 mile diet for most of us - unless you live in Edmonton or Montreal.

From a Premium Brands Factory to a Starbucks near You

So here's how it goes down... roughly... the chocolate brownie or egg breakfast sandwich gets cooked in this factory... 100s of them... 1000s of them... a whole long conga line of brownies and breakfast sandwiches. Which come toddling off the assembly line quick frozen and tucked into individual plastic wrappers. They come with an expiry date (6 months into the future - they are frozen after all) and are packed up in boxes. These boxes are bundled up and shipped off to Starbucks cafes around the country. Shipped via train, truck or plane? Don't know.

But the baked goods are frozen... so the expiry date is good, right? Well, as long as the temperature stays constant for the entire trip... as they get trundled from factory to loading dock and on to a truck... which has a good refrigeration system... and then unloaded or reloaded somewhere else (several times perhaps)... until finally, they arrive through the door with Gordon Foods.

A Starbucks breakfast sandwich in it's wrapper.
(From CNN)

Have those boxes remained frozen for the entire time? No idea. Maybe not a big deal for my chocolate brownie... maybe a bigger deal for your egg & sausage breakfast sandwich. Some Reddit folks have spotted entire boxes of baked goods tossed in the trash behind Starbucks. Perhaps they arrived thawed instead of frozen?

I will tell you this... those boxes sit on the floor at Starbucks for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on how busy it is in the store. And then they go into a freezer... to be pulled out days, weeks, months (?) later and thawed, reheated and served to you.

What happens to the unsold, thawed items? Well, for my local Starbucks, they bag them up and donate them to a local youth shelter. The shelter coordinator hits all of the local Starbucks (we only have 6) in the early morning and picks the bags of food up. And here's hoping that the items are all distributed and eaten quickly.

Not just Starbucks

So, who, you are asking, is Premium Brands? They are a Vancouver-based business that has become the fastest-growing packaged foods supplier in North America. Over the years, they have quietly bought up all sorts of niche food suppliers... places like Piller's Meats in Ontario and Freybe Gourmet Foods. Premium Brands doesn't just supply Starbucks... they also supply The Keg and Boston Pizza...

Which makes me wonder... is ANY of the food that we buy in restaurants actually... you know... cooked from scratch in a restaurant? Or is it all just pre-made "somewhere" and all the restaurant does is heat it up, doll it up with some sauce or a sprig of parsley, and serve it to us?

Cause I'm going to bet that Tim Horton's does not mix up their donut batter in the store. Nor do they make their own breakfast sandwiches... they just assemble them for you. Everything in a Timmies breakfast sandwich was cooked long, long ago in a factory far far away... and shipped to your local coffee shop.

Ugh. That's the thing. Whenever you have a restaurant chain... where customers expect the same standards whether they are in Vancouver or Halifax... or if you have "fast food" or "convenience food"... you are looking at pre-cooked, prepared food.

It's not just Gordon Foods too... there is also Sysco Foods. I've seen their trucks delivering boxes of "food" to various businesses. Heck... I even stayed at a retreat centre in Edmonton once and had the most amazing "healthy" cookie with craisins and nuts. It was SO good! I asked the retreat director - "OMG! What is the recipe for these??!!" She replied "They're good, aren't they! They come from Sysco." No recipe. No home-cooked baking. All the retreat centre did was bake the pre-made cookie dough.

Sadness. No yummy cookie recipe. Sigh. And no yummy brownie recipe either. It makes me stop and think when I look at a restaurant menu... A steak is probably cooked onsite. Chicken fingers? Probably come in a box and are tossed in the deep fryer. Salad? Probably comes in a bag, pre-mixed.

We have sacrificed something with our fascination with speed and convenience... And let's not even mention the environmental cost... prepared food that is shipped hundreds (if not thousands) of kilometres. All that packaging. All that food waste. There is a high cost to convenience and speed.

Further Reading

Globe & Mail - The Canadian secret behind the sandwiches at Starbucks - The Globe and Mail

Financial Post - This Canadian food company is growing like crazy because of Starbucks grab-and-go breakfast sandwiches | Financial Post

The Daily Meal The Scary Reason Starbucks' Food Looks Identical No Matter Where You Are (thedailymeal.com)

Premium Brands - Wikipedia article

Fox News - Starbucks recall of pre-packaged food (from 2016)

Reddit - Starbucks food boxes thrown in dumpster

Cukes - better shrink-wrapped or naked?

Have you seen those triple packs of cukes in Superstore? Maybe only if you shop there. Well, let me tell you about them.

They come wrapped in plastic shrinkwrap, all three of them bundled together. It's a way better price than buying 3 single cucumbers (also separately wrapped in plastic). But the kicker with the triple pack is... the cucumbers inside the triple packaging area ALSO shrinkwrapped! What the heck??

Isn't that double packaging and incredibly bad for the environment? Yes it is! And Superstore got that memo and now those triple-packaged cucmbers are naked inside the packaging. Which is good.

Or is it. I just learned that cucumbers dehydrate three times as fast when they are naked. So the shrink-wrap actually serves a very useful function. A naked cucumber will last 2 days... a shrink-wrapped one will last 7 days. If we want cucumbers in February... then we should be grateful for shrink-wrapped produce... because they can be transported farther and still arrive in good shape.

Sooo... I'm actually kind of missing the individually shrink-wrapped cukes. You see... we bought at triple pack last week and ate one cucumber quite quickly in our salads. And then we ran out of greens for the salad and couldn't get to the store and... now those 2 naked cucumbers are off - going slimy and mouldy. Had they been individually shrink-wrapped, they might have lasted longer.

Now that we know that, however... we can take some steps to clothe our naked cucumbers. Put them in a big ziploc bag and squish out as much air as possible. 

Because... which is worse... some excess plastic wrap or... two wasted cucumber and all of the wasted water and gas and labour and... everything went into producing them and transporting them and storing them and selling them?

Now... having said that... there is no excuse for shrink wrapped bananas! Oh, the Brits...

To eat or not to eat: The Truth about Food "Expiration" Dates

A few months ago, I poured my morning glass of soy milk (organic). I took a hefty swig and swallowed. Bahhhh!!!!! It was sour!! And lumpy! Ick!! I spit out what was in my mouth and rinsed with copious amounts of water. The milk had obviously gone off. How had I missed that? I mean, according to the date on the carton, the milk hadn't reached it's "Best Before" date. Urgh... don't those dates mean anything??

This morning, I came across an article that suggested we stop wasting food by throwing it out after it passes its expiry date. That lots of food is good long past the date on the package. Ummm.... what about sour soy milk?? Which makes me ask again... don't those dates mean anything?? 

I always thought the "Best Before" or expiry dates were there to protect us from food poisoning. Although, to be honesty... I've also eaten my share of moldy cheddar cheese... just cut off the moldy bits and you're good to go! Unless it's blue cheese of course... cause even that can go "off" when it starts growing non-blue mold. Oh, and I do know that moldy bread should not be eaten... even with the moldy bits cut off, cause the mold roots can spread deep into the bread, far from the obvious mold. On the other hand, I've eaten sandwiches and tasted the mold go by and lived to tell the tale. I wouldn't eat canned food that was past its expiry date but I do eat dry pasta that is past its expiry date. Is there some unwritten code for knowing when it's safe to ignore expiry dates and when we should heed them?

Yup... cooked and ate this on 11 July 2021... still alive!

So... what do we know? Well, 40% of food grown and produced in America is wasted.  Which isn't just a waste of food, but also a waste of water to grow that food. Plus the amount of stuff that ends up in the landfills (21% of landfill stuff is food). On average, each person in the USA wastes 290 lbs of food per year. These numbers are concerning. Particularly when 42 million people in the USA live with food insecurity.

And yet... we come across these expiry dates and... what's a person to do? Run the risk of botulism or food poisoning by eating food which might be bad?

It all comes down to those food labels... and the question... do those dates actually mean anything? Apparently researchers studied food "expiration" dates and concluded that while they are well-intentioned, they are haphazard and confusing. No kidding. On top of that... they rarely correspond to food actually expiring or spoiling. Ummm... yeah... tell that to the person who drank spoiled soy milk even though it hadn't reached its expiry date!

So here's the bottom line... those dates aren't food expiration dates at all. Nope. For one thing, those dates are not standardized. For another thing, they have almost nothing to do with food safety. 

One type of vegan mayo with a BestBefore date...

Another vegan mayo with a "Lot" date... in the future. Is that a BestBefore date?

When date labels first appeared after the Second World War, they were mostly for store owners. So that they would know when to rotate food stock. But given that consumers wanted to buy the freshest food possible, some people published little booklets to decipher the date codes on food. I'm surely not the only one who paws through the cartons of milk looking at the date labels and pulls a "fresher" one from the back of the pack?

Once manufacturers figured out that consumers wanted to know about the dates, they started putting month, day, year on their products. Consumers no longer needed a booklet to decode the dates on food labels. But there was no consistency between manufacturers and producers. In the US, there is no federal regulation about date labels (except  for infant formula) and regulation falls to the states. In some states, the date on milk has to be 21 days after bottling... in others the date is 14 days after bottling...

On top of that... some manufacturers use a “Best By" label on one product, a “Sell By” label on another, a “Best if used Before” label on a third and a "Use By" label on a fourth. All four of which mean very different things... but we consumers tend to treat them all as "expiration" dates. Ultimately though, the manufacturer's want their product to taste the best (flavour, texture, mouth feel) and the dates on food labels have more to do with food quality than food safety. The "Best Before" date isn't the same as a "Bad After" date! Except for things like meat... and deli products... and eggs... which, if they are past their date can really make you sick.

Federal regulation to standardize dates on food labels has been attempted several times in the USA but always goes down in flames. Some major food associations (Consumer Brands Association and the Food Marketing Institute) managed to come up with two labels: the "Best if Used By" label is for food quality and the "Use By" label is for food safety. But they haven't caught on with all food producers.

But even if we could get to standardized regulation (and Canada has more than the US), we'd still need to shift our mindset about food that is past its prime. Lots of food is still safe to eat after the date on the label. It's not "bad" for us. This might then shift the perception that donating expired food (that is not at its peak quality) to food banks and homeless shelters is a "bad" thing. This might help with food insecurity...

The UK even came up with a slogan for food safety: "Look, Smell, Taste, Don't Waste". In other words, we should trust our senses. I would also add "Touch" to that message. If I'm cutting up a pepper that is a bit dodgy (squishy bits), I use my fingers to check for the slimy bits and cut those off... But the word "touch" doesn't really fit in the UK's rhyming slogan.

Although... the taste bit certainly worked for me with the soy milk. It tasted icky and once I had a closer look at it, I could see it was lumpy. And... the fact that it was going off before it's expiration date? That's because it had been sitting open in our fridge for days (perhaps... cough... a week or more...). Those "Best Before" dates are only good for unopened packages. Once it's been opened... all bets are off.

A Canadian Government site notes that...  "because of the potential for contamination, once a package of lunchmeat is open, for safety reasons, it should be consumed in 3-5 days. You can't tell whether food is unsafe by its smell or taste." Well... so much for the UK's slogan - "Look, Smell, Taste, Don't Waste". Sigh.

Inspections Canada has a site which offers some information about date labelling on pre-packaged foods. It would appear that foods with a durable life (related to quality) of 90 days or less, have regulations about date labelling. For foods that have a durable life of more than 90 days, there is voluntary date labelling. We are still left to navigate through Best Before, Use By, Packaged On, Expiration, Freeze By, Use By.... and figure out what they all mean.

The Canadian Government also has a page that outlines how to handle and store fresh food in the fridge and freezer. Did you know an open container of yogurt has a shelf life of 3 days? Ooops... We used to buy 4 litre buckets of yogurt from Superstore and eat them over the course of a week... or two. If we saw mold on the edge of the bucket, we'd just scrape it off and keep eating. It's amazing we didn't get seriously sick! Opened milk is only good for 3 days too. Cheese is interesting though... it's good for the date given on the packaging, whether it's opened or unopened.

But what about processed foods? Like canned foods and packages of pasta, dried beans or rice? I mean, canned foods have a date on the bottom. Isn't  that an expiry date? Nope. It's a quality date. Apparently canned foods, if they are stored correctly (no extremes of heat or moisture) and aren't damaged (leaking, dented, rusted), are good forever. They might not be top quality but... essentially... good to eat for a very, very, very long time.

So, at the end of the day... what's a person to do? Isn't there a general rule of thumb we could use? Nope... it's OK to cut mold off of hard cheeses like cheddar, but not off of soft cheeses. It's OK to drink milk past the date on the carton, as long as it doesn't smell or taste funny. But don't try that with deli meat. You can test eggs past their carton date with the float test, but there isn't any way to test meat or seafood.

I can see why people just err on the side of caution and toss anything past the labelled date! On the other hand... some foods like canned goods, pasta, dried beans and rice are much more forgiving. Usually. We have used dried beans well past the date on the package and found them to have texture issues - way too hard and virtually inedible, no longer how much we soaked or cooked them. We have also smelled rice and found it to be rancid. I guess each person/household needs to learn the rule of thumb for the stuff they buy most often.

From a can of Cream of Celery soup in our pantry...
To eat... or not to eat... that is the question...

I did learn something today about canned foods... that they are likely to be good for a very long time. It's still a good idea to check the cans and make sure they aren't dented or bulging or rusted. And we always rotate our new cans to the back of the pantry and use the older cans first.

Gone are the days of just tossing "expired" food willy nilly. This is going to require a bit  more thought and attention!

Cooking with Kitchen Scraps

We hate to waste food and yet, somehow, it always seems to happen. This feels a bit like a repeat of last week's blog post and yet... it's not. You see, we have a compost bin and so, can convince ourselves that our food waste isn't the worst thing in the world... after all, the wilted celery will go into the compost bin and then fertilize our garden, right? And the dead cooked stuff will end up in the city recycle bin where it too will be turned into compost. Good, yes?

Well, yes and no... I can hear my mother now... and maybe your mother too... back when we were kids. "Some starving family in Africa would love to eat that...". And it's true... we toss away an enormous amount of food. Apparently the Canadian kitchen is on of the worst places for food waste.

 Which brings me to... IKEA. Strange leap, I know but... they just published (and it's available for FREE) The ScrapsBook - a cookbook for your kitchen scraps. Sayyyyyy whaaaat???

Yes... it's true... all of those things that we righteously toss into the compost bin could actually be used to cook something delicious... And not just soup broth... See the scraps below? Bruised apple cores and skins, carrot ends (including the green bits), old black beans, overripe beets and leftover ginger... all of that can be turned into...

 

This... a scrumptious veggie burger... out of kitchen scraps... crazy!

Apparently all of this is part of IKEA's wider pledge to become a circular, climate-positive business by 2030. Their head of marketing (Johanna Andren) said that "Seeing how much waste is created in one of the most important rooms in the home, we set out to inspire Canadians by giving food scraps another look and offering new, creative ways to reduce food waste at home”.

I've downloaded the pdf version of their cookbook and we might just have to try some of these - like maybe Corn Cob Soup... or Pesto made from kale stems... whoa... 

Some cool ideas and a great way to eek every bit of nourishment out of our produce (and there are meat recipes too) before it hits the compost or green bin...

Love Food Hate Waste

We hate throwing away food. And yet... it happens. Not as often as before, but still. Every little bit that gets thrown away weighs on us.

Sometimes it's because things migrate to the back of the refrigerator and well... we lose sight of them and by the time we find them... oops... too far gone.

Sometimes it's because the produce we buy has already started down the road to decay. I'm looking at you avocados! Sooo expensive and they look fine on the outside. But when you open them up, they're all brown and icky. And then there are the bags of mandarins or oranges which have one that is has already gone off.

Or the limp stalks of celery... but those can usually get repurposed for soup stock!

Apparently we are not alone. We received a waste management newsletter from our regional district a few weeks ago. They are aiming for Zero Waste... our goal is 90% waste reduction by 2030. We are only at 67% waste reduction... but we're getting there!

They had a short article on food waste which really shocked me. One third of all food produced globally is wasted! That's just mind-boggling. That food gets wasted from the farm to the table... all along the food production route. From squiggly potatoes that don't look "perfect" to wastage in transit, to wastage in grocery stores to wastage in our fridges to wastage off the plate. 

Love Food Hate Waste Canadian stats

And look... every day in Canada... every DAY... we waste 1,200,000 tomatoes... 2,400,000 potatoes... 450,000 eggs. Every day. WTF?

That's 2.2 million tonnes of food every year... tossed. Not only is a waste of food, but it's a waste of water, fertilizer, energy, gasoline, labour, etc, etc. Oh, and it's a waste of money too... Those 2.2 million tonnes of food waste cost us over $17 billion dollars a year... and contribute to our greenhouse gas emissions...

Want some more stats?

• Canadians are among the worst of the developed nations when it comes to food waste, with about 47 percent of food waste occurring in the home
• 63% of household food waste in Canada is avoidable
• An average household throws away $1,000 of edible food per year.
  

 Sheesh...

There's a website which aims to help us waste less food, with tips on everything from how to store produce so it stays fresh longer, to meal planning and portion sizes. Some great tips for all of us... and most of them are just small steps... but make a big difference!

Millions of Animal Lives Wasted due to Brexit and Covid

One meat exporter from the UK said last month that he had 30 tonnes of pork rotting in Rotterdam, held up by paperwork. All thanks to Brexit. And he's not the only one. Another exporter said he had five containers held up with 23 tonnes of meat in each container (115 tonnes in total). But all they're really concerned about is their bottom line... their profits.

It all sounds so clinical... pork, meat, produce, goods... although the word "rotting" should wake us up to the fact that this isn't just a waste of food. It's a waste of lives.

Your average 300 lb hog will generally produce 130 lbs of usable pork. So let's do some math:

• 1 tonne = 2204 lbs

• 30 tonnes = 68,138 lbs
  
• 115 tonnes = 253,532 lbs

• 30 tonnes or 68,138 lbs divided by 120 lbs of meat/pig = 525 pigs
• 115 tonnes = 253,532 lbs divided by 120 lbs of meat/pig = 1950 pigs
  

Soooo... just two British meat exporters have raised and killed roughly 2500 pigs for nothing. What a hideous, horrible waste of lives. And this is likely just the tip of the iceberg. There are many, many more meat exporters (chickens, pigs, lamb) as well as seafood exporters who have had to dump thousands of tonnes of meat/seafood because of paperwork issues with the new Brexit export/import regulations.

One official from the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) said that more than 120 lorries carrying British meat were stuck at Rotterdam. Let's say 23 tonnes/lorry (according to one news article) =  2760 tonnes. More than 50,000 animal lives wasted. And some of those lorries might have pork... but some might have lamb or even chicken. Which would mean many, many more lives/tonne since chickens weigh a lot less than pigs...

Perhaps it's time to rethink the whole meat industry thing... after all, a shipment of dried lentils or beans can sit for days or weeks and be no worse for it. Just saying. Eating meat is a luxury...

Covid

And I don't even want to think about the 17,000,000 (million!) mink that were "culled"... exterminated? slaughtered? Let's just say killed... in Denmark because of Covid. Not all of those mink were sick with a Covid variant, they decided to exterminate/eliminate/execute their entire mink farm populations just to be on the safe side. That's an unfathomable number of animals.

How do you even kill that many animals within the space of a few days? Gassing them with carbon dioxide apparently... but it can be problematic because mink are semi-aquatic animals and can hold their breath for long periods which means that after 30 seconds of gassing... they might not all be dead.

Why the heck does Denmark even have so many mink? Because they are the world's largest producer of mink pelts, producing over 19,000,000 pelts every year (over a billion dollars). Who buys that many mink pelts?? China. It's a luxury item, see. Wearing a mink fur coat denotes status and wealth. I tend to lean more towards the idea that it denotes cruelty, inhumanity and sheer horror. But hey, that's just me.

Of course, European fur farms are better regulated than fur farms in China, which should perhaps make us feel a bit better. At least in Denmark, the animals are killed by gassing before being stripped of their skins. In China, they simply stun the animals with blows to the head (or grab them by the hide legs and whack their heads on the ground), hang them upside down and then skin them starting at the hind legs. They then pull the pelt down the body and off the head. And yes, the animals are still alive during this process and some wake up while being skinned. Some still have beating hearts and eye movements five to ten minutes after being skinned alive. All that suffering so some rich person, or wanna-be-rich person, can have the luxury status-symbol of a fur coat.

Every once in a while, when I think about having a steak or some garlic prawns... I just have to remind myself of how that steak was raised... and of how the prawns are harvested... and I don't really want steak or prawns anymore.

What's in Your Freezer?

Have you ever lost anything in your freezer? Of course you have. We all have. Most freezers are bottomless black holes, particularly chest freezers. "Oops... forgot we had that roast... now it's totally freezer-burnt!" It always annoys me when we have to toss food away...

Fridge freezers aren't much better, be they the traditional top-mount ones or the pull-out drawer ones. Our fridge freezer is on the bottom of the fridge but consists of two doors, one for each side. There are three pull-out racks on each side which, you might think, would make it much easier to organize things but... such is not the case. It just means it's easier to lose something and then have to hunt through six different racks trying to find the elusive item.

Oh sure, it starts out as organized... we have a plan for what food will go into what rack but... over time, a rack will be too full, so we put something into a place where it does not belong and...very quickly... we lose track of what is in the freezer. Sigh.

And our chest freezer, which is tiny (5 cubic feet) can still lose things. Particularly if they cycle down to the bottom... you have to haul everything out in order to figure out what might be in the frosty pit. It's not the most efficient system in the world. And... ***cough***... sometimes we are too lazy to label bags or containers. "We'll remember that this is pea soup, right?" Nope... turns out apple sauce and pea soup can look remarkably similar through blurry, frosty plastic containers.

For a while, we had a laminated sheet of paper where we would try to keep track of what we had in the freezers and how much. That was when our fridge freezer was just the regular top-mount one. Two freezers... easy... nope. It worked for a while and then we'd get behind and... it all fell apart. Now, with a fridge freezer that has, essentially, 6 compartments, a two-sided piece of paper isn't going to work.

So I started snooping around for a freezer app. Surely someone must have come up with such an idea. Turns out that they have... many different options.

I took a look and downloaded an app called Items in my Freezer... it looked pretty simple.

I was able to add different freezer areas - so Chest Freezer - basket, Chest Freezer - shelf, Chest Freezer - bottom, etc. And then each pull-out rack in our fridge freezer got it's own section as well. I then did a freezer inventory coupled with some reorganizing and entered it all into the app. Voila! Instant freezer inventory. And it is relatively easy to update it as we consume things or add things. The only hiccup is that it doesn't allow us to sort by categories. So if my partner asks if we have any more baked beans, I have to scan the various freezer lists to see where baked beans show up (some are upstairs for easy use and some are in the chest freezer). It's annoying. But it's also free... and yet... annoying.

So I have been snooping around some more looking for an app that would allow us to categorize things and sort better. It would also be nice if the app were shareable so my partner could have it as well.

And I came across an called Frizor (it's by French developers - hence some of the quaint spelling mistakes).

It has ads or you can buy a subscription which costs €1/month (about $1.50/month) or €7/month (about $11/year). It has categories (veggies, meat, fish, starters, desserts, individual dishes, etc) and you can sort by all sorts of things, freezing date, categories, alphabetical or expiration date. I just downloaded it and am going to have to go and do another freezer inventory but... I think it has potential and it might be worth the cost. We'll try it for a while with the annoying ads and then see how it goes. It might be worth the annual cost (breaks down to $1/month) just in limiting the amount of stuff that gets wasted. Although... since we've gone meatless, there is much less of that!

I'm going to give it a try for a few weeks and will report back on how it goes...

How do you keep track of your freezer stuff?  Heck, do you even keep track of your freezer stuff?