Baggies are a girls best friend

I wish I owned stock in Dow Chemical, the owners of the Ziploc brand, or in the Glad company or in the Reynolds Packaging Group who owns both the "baggies" and "hefty" trademarks. 

Why you ask?  Well, sometimes I think it's because I'm only cooking for two (sometimes for one since my diet is different than Stephen's), but I've been doing that since our youngest went off to college in 2000.  Sometimes I think it's because shopping is more time consuming here and requires quite a bit of planning, so I try to buy in bulk when I can and I don't won't to waste anything.  It's just not that easy to "run to the store."  Sometimes I think it's my reaction to the lack of availability of canned foods and convenient sizes.  Whatever the reason, one of the things I absolutely couldn't do without is baggies.  I only have 4 drawers in my kitchen and one of the four is filled with my collection of snack-, sandwich-, quart- and gallon-sized bags.  Some of the sizes are available here, but others I have to bring from the states.

As I said, I buy almost all of my meat in bulk at PriceSmart (our Costco) and once I have it home, I divide it into two-portion sizes in sandwich bags.  

Of course, the individual bag is just the first step; the large freezer bag with label is the second step!

The same goes for the things I have to make from scratch.  For example, you can't find canned beans here . . . . so I cook two pounds of black beans in the crockpot and then freeze them in canned-sized servings in sandwich bags.   What else?  My frig is full of individual bags of home made chicken broth (oh, for Swansons in a can), vegetable broth, applesauce, garbanzo beans, white beans, etc.  My most recent use is to move hot dog buns and hamburger buns into individual bags so that I can easily thaw out just one.  

Not all of the bags I use are in the freezer, however.  Since we must co-exist with ants, anything that has been opened has to go inside a sealed bag.  So, my kitchen shelves are also full half-used taco and chili seasoning packets inside bags.  

Well, this is definitely a light-weight post when compared to my last one.  Isn't that just the way life is?  Sometimes it's about weighty words and important truths and sometimes it's about baggies and how they make my life easier!