MrAnimal Farm

How To Freeze Bananas

Ever wondered how to freeze bananas? If not, you probably should have at some point.+

I know you’ve done it. We’ve done it too. You buy a whole bunch of bananas and then they sit on the top of your refrigerator or counter until they start to turn brown. You consider tossing them before the fruit flies show up. But wait!

You can totally make good use of those bananas. If we can avoid wasting food, we will always do what we can. We try to stick to our food budget as best we can. Which means we preserve all sorts of food like freezing peppers, freezing eggs, freezing milk; and bananas are no exception.

In fact, with just a little bit of prep work you can freeze those bananas and make them last a whole lot longer.

Now, before you freeze them you do want to make sure that they aren’t over ripe. If they are too close to turning they’ll be way too mushy once you thaw them out. If they are over ripe, you can always use them to make banana bread.

How to freeze bananas

Now that you have determined if they are over ripe or not, it’s time to prep them for freezing.

This part is way easy. First you want to peel your banana. Like I said, easy.

Take out a sharp knife and cutting board. Use the knife to cut the banana in half. We recommend cutting the banana in half because it’s easier to put in the bag that way. You can freeze a whole banana just as easily, if you prefer.

banana that has been cut in half on blue plate

Take each half and place them into a freezer bag. Be sure to squeeze out as much air as you can without squashing the banana halves.

Put the bag into the in freezer and allow to freeze. Should be frozen in a few hours.

You can also freeze banana chips

Again, you’ll want to peel your banana.

Using a sharp knife you’ll want to carefully cut the banana into slices. About a 1/4 inch thick should hold up nicely.

Pull out a sheet of parchment or wax paper and put it over a cookie sheet or baking pan. Place each individual banana slice flat on the parchment paper and place pan in the freezer.

After a few hours your banana slices should be pretty well frozen. Pull the baking pan out of the freezer and pull your frozen banana chips off. Place them into a quart sized freezer bag and put them back in the freezer.

The reason you want to freeze them on parchment paper first is because they will clump together and freeze as a big banana ball. As funny as that may sound this is not the result you want.

The best way to get individual banana slices for later is to pre-freeze them. Plus, if you slice them, you can always make dehydrated banana chips later.

How to thaw your frozen bananas

Again, this is pretty easy. When you’re ready to eat your frozen bananas, just pull them out of the freezer and stick them into the fridge.

It shouldn’t take very long for your bananas to become soft enough to eat.

Common questions

How long can you freeze bananas? The FDA website says they can be frozen for 2-3 months without a significant loss of quality. They can actually last a lot longer but I wouldn’t recommend longer than 6 months.

Why would I want to freeze bananas? What can I do with frozen bananas? Aside from not having to toss out perfectly good fruit, there are a couple of reasons. You can put them in a blender with some milk and other frozen fruits and make a smoothie. You can also use frozen bananas to make a great ice cream alternative.

Can you freeze mashed bananas? Absolutely! In fact, as we mentioned above, frozen mashed bananas are a really tasty and healthy alternative to frozen yogurt or ice cream.

When you freeze bananas do you need to peel them first? Yes, you won’t want to freeze them in the peel. The peel gets dark and smushy. They also tend to stick to the banana and is a hassle to remove. So, it is safe to freeze them in their peel but life is easier if you peel before freezing.

pinterest image with plate of banana slices. text overlay says, "Can you freeze a banana? here's why and how"

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bowl of vegetable fried rice with chopsticks and soy sauce packets

reasons you should be making crockpot meals

Vegetable Fried Rice

By MrAnimal Farm Leave a Comment

Love take out but hate take out prices? You can make your own vegetable fried rice at home AND freeze it so you have more for later.

We love vegetable fried rice. We also love sticking to our food budget and take out is not always the most frugal option for us. So we decided to try our hand at making take out ourselves.

How to Make Vegetable Fried Rice

First things first, gather your ingredients:

1 TBS extra virgin olive oil

1 bag of stir fry style vegetables

1 garlic clove

2-3 eggs

3 cups of cooked your choice of rice (we use long grain brown rice)

3 TBS of lite soy sauce

instant pot, bag of frozen stir fry mix, minced garlic, bottle of lite soy sauce, 2 bags of cooked rice

Instant Pot Vegetable Fried Rice

Pull out your Instant Pot and start the saute function. You will want to let your Instant Pot heat for a few minutes.

Once your IP is hot add 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. You can also use any other kind of lightly flavored/flavorless oil. Allow your oil to heat.

You can dip your fingers in water and flick a bit into the oil to test if it is hot enough. If the water sizzles and pops, it’s hot enough. You can also wait and make your best guess but that’s not nearly as exciting.

With your oil properly heated, it’s time to add in your stir fry vegetables. You can use fresh vegetables or the frozen prepackaged stuff from the grocery store. Whichever you prefer.

You can also add in any of your own frozen zucchini, frozen squash, or frozen peppers.

Add in your vegetables and stir with a spatula. Make sure your vegetables are getting coated with the hot oil. I will sometimes add another couple drops of oil if the vegetables are not quite coated.

Allow the vegetables to heat in the oil, stirring occasionally, for 3 to 4 minutes. You want your veggies tender but not mushy. After your 3-4 minutes is up, add in a garlic clove and stir in for another minute or so.

Now use your spatula and push all of the vegetables to one side of the pot. Crack your eggs and drop them on the empty side of the pot. You can add or subtract eggs depending on your taste. We like to use 3.

With your spatula, scramble the eggs on the empty side of the pot. They should cook pretty quickly. Once they are no longer runny, go ahead and mix them with the rest of the veggies.

Now it’s time to add in your precooked rice. If you have already cooked and frozen rice, this is the perfect time to use it. Mix the rice in with the vegetables until everything is thoroughly mixed.

Now add in your soy sauce and continue to stir. After everything is thoroughly mixed and heated through you will want to cut the heat on your Instant Pot.

stirring vegetable fried rice in Instant Pot

This recipe will make about five 1 cup servings. If you are trying your hand at meal prep, you can double this recipe and freeze what you don’t eat right away for later.

How to Freeze Vegetable Fried Rice

Freezing vegetable fried rice is really easy and it gives you a super tasty meal that your future self will love.

Allow your vegetable fried rice to cool for a bit. You will need to gather a measuring cup, a sharpie, and a few freezer safe storage bags.

Depending on if you want single servings or if you will reheat for a family meal in the future you can store in either quart size or gallon size freezer bags. Using a measuring cup, scoop out 1 cup servings into your bags.

Single servings will go in a quart bag, larger family servings can go in the gallon bag. You may also want to try using a 1/2 cup measuring cup. It’s smaller size makes it cleaner and easier to scoop into the storage bags.

2 bags of vegetable fried rice, ready to go in the freezer

After everything has been moved from the pot into the storage bags, press as much air out of the bags as you can and flatten them out. Then stack them onto the shelves in your freezer.

How to thaw and reheat

If you thought freezing was easy, thawing is even easier. For single servings just move a serving from the freezer to your fridge over night. For larger servings you may want to try a day and a half or two days in the fridge.

Once thawed you can then put your veggies in a bowl and microwave for around a minute and a half, time will vary depending on the microwave. You can also skip the thawing process altogether and just go straight to the microwave but it will likely dry out and not be as tasty.

y sauce packets. Text on image reads, "How to make takeout style vegetable fried rice at home"

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Take The Pantry Challenge

By MrAnimal Farm Leave a Comment

Have you ever taken the pantry challenge before? If not, you’re in for a treat. If you have, it’s about time you do it again.

cabinet full of cereal and dessert baking goods

So, what is the pantry challenge?

The pantry challenge will take your frugal living to the next level. It is an efficient use of your food budget and will really expand your capabilities in the kitchen.

The best part is that it’s totally free and easy to do. You just need to set aside a little up front time for planning and then you are good to go.

But really, what is the pantry challenge?

The pantry challenge is when you take a set amount of days where you and your family ONLY eat food that is already in your pantry. For the purpose of this challenge we can expand the definition of pantry to also include cabinets, refrigerator, and freezer.

The main goal is to find many different ways on how to use everything in your pantry.

Why should I do this?

If you are only using food that you have already have, the obvious reason is that nothing will go to waste. If nothing is going to waste you will overall save money on your food budget.

You can also make good use of your coupon stockpile.

Another good reason is that it will ultimately save you time. And who couldn’t use more of that?

Alright, I’m in. How do I do this?

First step is to sit down and decide what your challenge goals will be. How many days will the challenge last?

Will you shop at all? If you eat a lot of fresh foods like fruit, vegetables, eggs, milk, etc you may need to make a few trips. If so, set a strict food budget and stick to it.

If you’re already in the super frugal department you may know you can preserve perishables by freezing milk, freezing eggs, and freezing vegetables and fruits. You can skip shopping altogether during the challenge if you’ve planned far enough ahead.

For the next step you will want to do a pretty thorough pantry inventory. This is really how you assess what you already have on hand and will also help you clear out anything that you won’t use or may have already expired.

Meal planning

Now that you have your pantry inventory, you will need to use that information to make a meal plan. But first you need to do a little bit of math.

You need to know exactly how many meals you are going to need. SO make a list of EVERY.SINGLE.MEAL. you and your family will eat during this challenge. Meals include breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, brunches, midnight food raids, etc.

For this example we will assume a family of 4 people eating 3 meals and 1 snack everyday. The example challenge will last for 30 days.

3 meals per person + 1 snack = 4 meals per day

4 meals per day x 4 people = 16 meals per day

16 meals per day x 30 days = 480 meals

Those numbers may seem a little intimidating but there is no need to be scared. You are most likely already eating this number of meals anyway, this plan just means you will know what you are eating ahead of time.

That means you won’t have to stare aimlessly into the fridge when it’s after dinner time and you don’t feel like cooking. You will already have something prepared.

You can also factor that for some meals, like dinner, you will have a whole meal prepared that the family will eat together.

Once you have your inventory together and your meal count, it’s time to start your pantry challenge meal plans. A great website to help with your planning is Supercook.

You can take your pantry inventory, put each item into their database and it will give you a whole list of different recipes you can make with what you ALREADY have!

This next pantry challenge tip is completely optional, but we highly recommend it. Once you have your meal plan, take a day or so, meal prep, and freeze as many of those meals as you can.

Meal prep and freezing will ensure that your ingredients won’t expire before your challenge is over. It also will save you a ton of time because you will only need to reheat each meal instead of cooking every time you want to eat.

Meal prepping will also help you stay on track because you’ve already made the meals. If you plan a wide enough variety of meals you will also never get bored of eating the same thing.

Remember, the secret to a successful pantry challenge is not being afraid to try new recipes, substitute ingredients, and be creative. Most importantly, have fun!

pinterest image with cabinet full of pasta with text stating, "Take the pantry challenge and start saving. think you can do it?"

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Cooking & Freezing Rice

By MrAnimal Farm Leave a Comment

Cooking and freezing rice is not hard at all. It’s great to do because rice is such a great base for so many recipes. Once it is frozen and stored away, all you need to do is thaw it to make a ton of great recipes.

We will be using an Instant Pot for this recipe. You can also use a Ninja Foodi or any pressure cooker. We chose the Instant Pot because it makes everyday cooking easier and you can find traditional stove top instructions on the rice packaging.

Before freezing rice you’ve got to cook it

First step is you will want to make sure your Instant Pot is clean and ready to cook. Then you will add in two cups of water and two cups of rice.

Most Instant Pots or any modern pressure cooker will have a preset rice cooking function. You can try that out, if you like. If it works for you, that’s super easy and you don’t need to set anything manually.

If you like to customize the process to your personal preferences, you can use the manual function. This is how we do it and we ALWAYS have delicious results. The rice comes out fluffy, not too moist or dry; in other words, it’s perfect!

To use the manual function you just push the manual button and then set the timer for 20 minutes. Now you can walk away until the Instant Pot is finished cooking. That’s it! Again, it’s super easy to do.

Natural release Vs manual release

Once the timer has gone off, you will want to let the rice natural release for about 10 minutes. The reason you let it release the pressure naturally is that this extra time will allow the rice to soak up any excess moisture and become really fluffy.

This next part is optional, but we feel like it really improves the preservation process. Take your cooked rice and dump it into a colander. You can leave it to drain or you can even press down on the rice with a cooking spoon or spatula to squeeze the extra water out.

You want to get the extra moisture out so that there is no extra moisture in the bag once you start the freezing process.

How to freeze rice

Now, grab your measuring cups and start to scoop out your rice. If you have a large family or like to make big dishes, you can freeze the whole batch in a large freezer bag.

You can also portion into smaller portions and put them in freezer bags. We like to put 1-2 cups in quart bags. Smaller portion sizes makes thawing quicker and we can make quick single serving meals.

If you go the route of smaller bags you will then want to flatten out the rice in the bag to make stacking easier. Finally, just place the bags in your freezer and you’re done!

Now, how do you thaw frozen rice? You can thaw frozen rice by putting it in the fridge overnight or defrost/heat in your microwave. Times will vary depending on how much rice you are trying to thaw.

Common questions

Can you freeze uncooked rice? Yes, you can. Make sure you use proper freezer bags. They are designed to lock out any moisture so your rice will stay fresh.

Can you freeze leftover cooked rice? Absolutely! Just follow the same instructions above.

Can you refreeze rice after it has been thawed? Yes, but it can lose some quality. You also want to make sure that the rice has not gone bad after the initial thawing. You definitely do not want to freeze spoiled rice. If you want to be extra sure, check out the FDA’s website and follow their food preservation safety guidelines.

Can I freeze any type of rice? Yes. The above method will work for jasmine rice, basmati rice, white rice, etc. Cook times may vary but the freezing rice and storage process is essentially the same.

What if my rice is too hard? Can I fix that? Hard rice is an easy fix. Just add a little bit of water, put a lid on it’s container and heat. You can do this on a stove top or in the microwave. You are essentially steaming the rice. This will soften up any rice that may have been under cooked or not had enough water to begin with.

Can you freeze other food? You sure can! Freezing is like nature’s pause button. You can freeze all sorts of stuff like mashed potatoes, eggs, oatmeal, etc.

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Goat Pen Ideas

By MrAnimal Farm Leave a Comment

Are you trying to corral those goats into a pen? With so many goat pen ideas out there, it’s tough to find which one is right for you. Goats need to be in an enclosure for their own safety from things like theft and predators.

There’s an old saying that goes, “If it can’t hold water, it can’t hold a goat!”. Basically, goats are escape-artists, which is why a goat pen needs to be built correctly.

What goat pen ideas are there?

Goat Pens & Enclosures

The tried and true way to make sure your goats have a safe pen is to make sure your fencing is up to the task of keeping goats. Here are some of our best fencing tips that we learned (the hard way). Here we explain the differences between different types of goat fencing.

Now that you know some tips and how to choose your fencing type, you can use this tutorial to put your fenced pen together.

Goat Shelters

Do you have a bunch of pallets lying around? You may want to consider building a goat shelter out of them. You can follow this tutorial on how to make a quick goat shelter out of pallets.

goat shelter made with pallets, cattle panel, and a tarp

Here’s a different take on the goat pallet shelter. This shelter will help keep your goats safe.

And, yet another guide on how to build a goat shelter out of pallets.

We have also used pallets to turn half of a carport into a full goat stall. We just drove t-posts and sat the pallets down on them like pegs.

We like pallets for goat pen ideas because they are so readily available for free or cheap and make building really easy. If you prefer traditional lumber, any of these plans can work with just a little tweaking.

If pallets aren’t your thing and you only have a few goats, you can also use a pre-manufactured dog house or dog igloo.

Whichever route you go your goats will have a shelter and they will stay safe and happy.

Goat Stalls & Kidding Pens

Do you need to specifically make a pen for the kids in your life (goat kids, of course)? This tutorial will walk you through how to make a kid pen.

Looking for a more in depth plan for your goat stall? Try out this customizable goat pen. You can easily adjust the plans to fit your needs a little better.

goat with goat kids in car port pallet pen

Building a goat pen on your own may be easier than you thought. When you own a farm, you can never have “too” many goat pen ideas to choose from.

For more on raising goats

4 Reasons You Should Be Making Crockpot Meals

By MrAnimal Farm Leave a Comment

When I turned 25 my dad bought me a crockpot (or slow cooker) for my birthday. I immediately thought, does this make me officially old? I am getting cookware as a birthday present. Having never used a slowcooker or made crockpot meals before and I couldn’t figure out why he would think of this for me.

Afterall, I will admit, cooking in general is not my forte. Well, my daddy is much wiser than I will ever be (he also loves – like I do – things that have a purpose). Since I wouldn’t want anything to go to waste (not using something like this is like throwing someone else’s money right in the trash), I set out to learn about crockpot meals and why I should be making them.

I quickly discovered that there are many reasons you should be making crockpot meals and couldn’t believe I hadn’t been making them sooner! And as an added bonus, crockpot meals make awesome freezer meals.

Since that fateful birthday (where I now feel empowered with knowledge instead of just plain ‘ol old), I use my crockpot at least once a week. Seriously, I do!…

MrAnimal Farm

How To Freeze Bananas