Poor little baggie

[gogoblender 3,078]

I gave in. I went shopping with a friend of mine who has a car, and we loaded up on tons of cheap meat, and canned goods at Super C here in Montreal. I'd decided the local grocery had cutpursed enough of my money and it's days of charging outrageous prices for small whiny mushrooms was over. The store was huge. I've never really shopped in huge stores like this, and they're more warehouses than anything. What delighted me most was all of the free samples being given away in slowly bubbling in pots, laid out on small paper plates, or even offered as imbibement in clear plastic cups.

 

Fake booze, hot food for free, and campbell soup cans for 2 bux a pop...what's not to like?

 

I ended up buying a few pounds of cheap ground beef. The stuff's awesome. I can toss it into almost anything and it's got such a neutral taste, I can eat it every day without getting sick of it.

 

But...how to organize this carnivore's bonanza? The package of meat was huge and weighty, it bent the thin styrofoam tray it was packaged in, and almost filled up my arms. I could smell burgers already. But of course, the mind was thinking of what to do with keeping it fresh while getting portions out of it.

 

Freeze the whole thing and chip off bits with my teeth or fork as needed?

Cook all of the pounds at once, eat like a king, get sick and never shop like this again?

 

I opted out for buying a small package of freezer bags...something which I'd promised myself I'd never do. They always seemed wasteful to me, and the idea of throwing out a nice plastic bag with that neat little snapping/sliding mechanism would always make me wince.

 

I portioned out all the meat into the bags, and left about two pounds in the fridge and have slowly been hand-tearing off chunks and throwing it into cooked portions of rice and pasta. I was having such a fun time until I got to the last little bit of meat that was left in the bag... and then the dilemma.

 

The bag was empty, nothing left in it...what to do? It just feels so wasteful to through something out like that and be so un-green...but I wasn't certain of how to clean something like this while feeling that all of those precious meat bits and juices were indeed cleaned out.

 

Does anyone have a cure for this, or a way to clean and reuse the bag? Or...are we all throwing them out?

 

 

gogo

[Genenut 8]

I know many "granolas" who wash thier ziplocs over and over again, Im sure there is a site with instructions on how to do it safely. then you can re use them for the next trip to the super supermarket ;-)

[Lord of the North 10]

Another option for you would be something like a reusable storage container like this one

that is available from Rubbermaid. This one is microwave, freezer, dishwasher safe and collapsible for easy storage. As for the baggy I think you have to turn them inside out and wash by hand but not sure.

[Timotheus 416]

I agree with Lord, I think some kind of storage container is your best bet in this case. If those bags you use now are plastic zip bags, I think you can wash them but they can tear quite easily around the edges so you should be careful when re-using them.

 

If they're regular bags, meaning you have to put a knot in them or something, don't bother and pick a choice from above because normal bags can be a pita to open again

Edited February 25, 2009 by Timotheus

[gogoblender 3,078]

Thanks guys. I'd really wanted one hundred percent reassurances that recycling the bags was fool proof and a hundred percent hygienic. It looks like noone's really convinced of that.

I think I'm just gonna invest a bit more in those cool little containers that Lord showed. I've actually had lots of those for years now, not this small a size...but I've found that they're pretty hard, cheap and most importantly, reusable.

 

I'll look for something slim and square that can be packed in the freezer, and hopefully this will play in for my bulk carnivore strategy.

 

 

gogo

[Yarasa 0]

... hundred percent hygienic. ...

 

You better start using glass containers than.