Frozen Food

Thaw 'em out, JK, then 'mushify' them. You then spread 'em on steaks jam butty fashion  

 Sorry Brian, peas are the work of the devil in any shape or form. Now, medium to well rump, grainy mustard slathered over then topped with a couple of snotty eggs, heaven on a plate. 

Only use for peas is if you've bumped your head and hold that evil frozen bag on the swelling

JK

We have 2 freezers one is just a small one under the fridge in the kitchen, used only for veg. The other us a chest freezer in the utility room off the kitchen. 

In that there is everything, meat, fish, ice cream, bread and home made dinners. 

Over the years there has been times I have 'found' items at the bottom which are clearly out of date, so they get binned. Most things though are fine. My rule of thumb is fish, bacon and chicken get used early while in date, by that I mean within 6 mths. I find bacon changes colour and takes on a fishy smell if out of date. Chicken and fish I would never mess with, far to likely to get a bad result if off.

Most other things like fruit can happily stay there for over 12mths.

If something looks wrong it usually is. 

We waste food at an alarming level due to a lack of common sense, but I believe as above it it does not look correct then do not use. I am anal in my approach to left overs, putting everything in a sealed container with a sticky label and freezing. The label has to go before the container goes into the freezer, or it will fall off. Lakeland plastic make the best labels and are all we will now use.

If your freezer is running correctly in the range of -18 to -20 then the contents will last for years. They could easily outlast the person who put them in there and be perfectly safe to eat. Some loss of taste would eventually be noticeable, but I would be surprised if you could recognise this.

The only foodstuff I am not happy to freeze for more than a couple of months is anything with uncooked bacon where the packet has been opened, even though I have then re-packaged in an airtight container. I find the taste change not to my liking.

Colin

I had to give up my allotment 5 years ago but I still have blackcurrants stored in our chest freezer to regularly make a bottle of blackcurrant gin, which I love. I don’t think I’d actually eat them but they look fine. Sadly only enough now for a couple more bottles, never seem to see blackcurrants for sale. Used to have lots at the allotment but the bushes won’t grow in our garden - too shady.

Evening

I spent a big part of my working life in the poultry industry. Back in 1984 the factory we used to supply stock to closed down. It was a frozen product place, these days everything is just chilled. Lots of stock was given to staff, so we took advantage of it. Some of the stock had been frozen for 8 years! We ate lots of free chicken back then, I'm still here

I'll agree with the common sense approach someone said upthread, if it looks or smell dodgy the bin it. 

Don't start me on rebagging and relabelling products

JK

If ever you're up in Cumbria, pop into Cranstons at Penrith. As well as a wonderful array of local meat, they sell some frozen loose fruit - including blackcurrants. I've a big bag in the freezer ready for pies and crumbles etc.

CRANSTONS

Thanks Goldie, but I don’t think that I could keep them frozen back to Devon. When mine run out I will probably look online though, can’t think of anywhere locally that sell them.

DEBSC, we have found loose frozen vegetables and fruit including blackcurrants in some garden garden centres, especially those that have a farm shop or food hall in them, also seen them in some independent farm shops, maybe worth a look in those places when you are out and about.

Oh result! On delving to the bottom of the chest freezer I found two more tubs of blackcurrants that I didn’t know I had! Treasure indeed. Now I’m going to be unusually selfish and not tell the grandchildren, we normally have a deal, half the blackcurrants for my gin and the other half for blackcurrant jelly, which they love with their chicken roast and sausages. So thank you for your suggestions, I think these will last me a little while and then it will have to be a blackcurrant hunt. At the moment some are now seeping in gin and sugar for a couple of months.