The house that Sam built....or "one thing leads to another"....

(Don't ask me what all this white space is....I tried to get rid of it and it would not go away!  Hello?  Google?  What are you doing now?)
It all started innocently enough with me wanting to start using up my freezer contents before gardening season was upon us.  So, I had the turkey "carcass" from Christmas in several freezer bags and decided that would be good for turkey soup so I defrosted it.

It made LOTS of broth too.......that's my biggest bowl!

I sauteed "the trinity", carrots, onions and celery in butter and cut all the meat off the bones and chopped it.  I had 3  piles; bones for the garbage, skin for the "girls" and meat for the soup.  

This is a great soup and wonderful recipe that I got from the All Recipes website and it's called After Thanksgiving Turkey Soup by Valorie Walker.  The only problem is it takes time and it makes LOTS of soup!

That is my largest stockpot!  Okay...now remember how I said I wanted to start clearing out my freezer to get ready for the gardening season?  Okay, here's my freezer, AFTER I took the turkey out.

 Okay....so now I have about 2-4 quarts of soup at least 3/4's of which needs to be frozen and where the heck am I going to put it?  Then I remembered seeing a blog the other day where she organized her freezer and separated things into plastic bins which were grouped such as meat, vegetables etc so things wouldn't get lost in the "freezer abyss".  Great idea!  So, while the soup was cooling I ran to town and got some plastic bins and came home and took everything out of my freezer and organized it into the bins.  Only I couldn't get all the bins into my freezer.  It's just like a shopping cart....you know how you can get it all in there but then when they bag it up you have all you can do to get it back into that same cart.  It's the same principle with my freezer.  But look at it now..........

How did I do it you ask?  Well, actually, it was very simple.....I broke down and went out to the garage and plugged in the chest freezer out there that I hadn't been using!  Brilliant, I say!  Brilliant!

You didn't REALLY think I was going to get 3-4 quarts of soup into that freezer in the before picture, did you?  I know...we were both hoping but it just wasn't going to happen.  I had unplugged the chest freezer a few years back when I lost $1000.00 worth of food during our ice storm and I had a $1000.00 deductible on my house insurance...naturally!  So, I had decided that I wouldn't use it and after cleaning it out I unplugged it.  After all, it's just me!  How much food do I need to freeze.  Well...as it turns out....quite a bit!

I thought of inviting people over for dinner but then I would have to clean the house really well and after the freezer incident I was really afraid of where that might lead!