February is clean out the freezer month at our house. Over the year, and especially over the holidays, we buy too much food and stock that freezer as if we are planning for a disaster that will keep us from the store for months.

Of course that never happens, but we stock up anyway. Each night in February we pick something to get rid of, something that is either getting old or looking old and needs to be eaten before it gets too freezer burned and goes bad. Sometimes it is the last two corn dogs in the large box that is mostly now empty, or it is the venison burger with the processing date rubbed off and unreadable. Yeah, that one went right to the garbage.

Each night it is like playing Russian roulette with dinner. Will we have the freezer burned beans with one chicken Kiev (which you know we will fight over) and some leftover meatballs, or the shrimp that looks like it has a little white beard on each one with the two sausages left from Christmas and the frozen stir fry vegetable blend that, lets face it, no one likes.

At our house this has always been a great month to lose weight. None of the food is very good, but you know what Mom used to say, “waste not, want not.” So on we go dreading February for not only the bad weather and boring activities in the cold tundra of Minnesota, but the nightly freezer roulette and its inevitable heartburn aftermath.