Save money by freezing food properly

It's quick, easy and downright cheap to freeze and store your food. You may find savings hidden in your freezer.

You may do it without thinking about it -- enjoy your lunch or dinner, and pack up the leftovers to toss them in the freezer. But putting a little more thought behind it could save you lots of money.

Forget calling in for takeout or dishing out cash in the drive-through, save money and open your freezer.

You can pretty much freeze any kind of food, you just have to know how to prepare it and store it properly. Those who rely on this say it really pays off.

Who knew that a freezer -- the place that can become a black hole for old and un-used food -- can really save big bucks.

"I like to call my freezer foods 'freezer gold,' because it's like a discovery in your freezer that will pay off in many ways," said meal planner Brenda Thompson.

There are a few simple rules for storing food and saving cash. Thompson, author of the blog Meal Planning Magic says first, freeze items that may be close to the expiration date -- including dairy products.

She said, "Sometimes when you need buttermilk, you just need a little for a recipe. You have some left over, you can put some in an ice cube tray and pull out what you need."

Next, freeze individual portions. It's quick and easy that way.

"We can pull them out for lunches and heat them up on the go," Thompson explained.

Thompson says don't be afraid to cook a little extra and freeze that too. Always let the food cool off completely before putting it away.

"Generally, if you put something in the freezer too fast, like, if you take it off the stove and you stick it in the freezer, it has a hard time adjusting and the crystals will form on the food," Thompson explained. "Occasionally those freezer crystals are freezer burn."

For the final and most important rule, when it comes to freezing foods, always label.

"No matter how great you think your memory is, you are just not going to know what it is," Thompson cautioned. "If you sort of identify it, then you may not know how old it is."

After all, throwing it out could mean throwing away a bargain meal

"Put it in your freezer and pull it out when you need it," Thompson said. "By doing so, you can save money by not making so many impulse buys at the grocery store."

Blizzard’s plans to satisfy their fanbase and still deliver a fresh experience

Waiting in the lobby of Blizzard’s Irvine headquarters, I was overcome by nostalgic reverence. Where most businesses have a mountain of months-old magazines, Blizzard has a museum. It was nothing too extravagant, mind you, but the frames lining the walls were like windows to my childhood. Each piece of classic Diablo art conjured up fond memories of the franchise that’s marking its 15th birthday this November.

It wasn’t always this way, however. Blizzard certainly didn’t begin its existence as a gaming giant responsible for both this generation’s Dungeons & Dragons and the game that has become South Korea’s national sport. Over the years, the company has seen both growth spurts and growing pains, both successes and, er, whatever Warcraft Adventures was. Many incredibly talented people have come and gone.

This is the environment Diablo III has evolved in. To track its development is to see a balancing act made all the more precarious by countless shifts and upheavals. One thing, however, has always remained constant: fandom. I’m not just referring to Diablo’s near-militant community—Diablo’s story is one of diehard dedication on both sides of the table. Most of the original Diablo team, you see, is now gone. In its place is a band of folks who grew up playing Diablo and Diablo II as fans, just like you or I. Now they’re shaping the franchise’s present and future, but—thanks to that ridiculously passionate community—they’re also trying their damndest to avoid losing sight of the past.

“When we started, we really inherited this big scary game,” explained game director Jay Wilson. “There are very few of us who actually worked on the previous Diablo games, so a lot of us came at it more as fans. When you’re building something that you didn’t originate, the struggle that you have is, how do you remain true to it while also being true to your own creative nature? If you make something, you can’t just copy. You have to infuse it with your own personality, your own interests, your own opinions, your own desires. If you don’t, then it will be soulless.”
It almost seems fitting—a game about, you know, the devil that sells its own soul. Sorry, though, Satan: this just isn’t your day.

Everybody’s had those first moments with a new game that really define the entire experience. Diablo III’s origins, then, lie not in some linear extension of the original Diablo’s creative vision, but in those player-driven experiences. Hearing Wilson describe his love affair with the first Diablo drove that point home.

“It was when I bought Warcraft II,” he said. “On the back of the CD case they had an ad for Diablo. It had a picture of the warrior with his sword and shield, standing in front of the church door with the red light streaming out of it. That image was so compelling to me that I wanted to play that game. I didn’t even know what it was and I wanted to play it. I remember, back then there was so little information. You just didn’t know a lot about games before they came out. So to have an image so compel me, I always remember that.

“The day I installed it, I told my wife ‘You need to leave the house, because it’s Diablo time now.’ ‘Diablo’ spoken in hushed tones. And it was all the classic moments: the first encounter with the butcher, the first encounter with the Skeleton King, the first time a hundred goatmen come running at you and you manage to survive by the skin of your teeth. The first time you griefed somebody who was your teammate. There are all those great moments that I think everyone had.”

Hindsight, however, stops being 20/20 when rose-tinted glasses are involved. For Wilson and the rest of Diablo III’s development team, avoiding that trap is the biggest challenge. When is it appropriate to give diehard fans precisely what they want? And—perhaps more importantly—when do you fire back with a stern “No”?

My Corner of the Canyon: ­­­Despite Reality, Hope Springs Eternal

The exotic sits on the table. It is surrounded by decidedly un-exotic things: a parking ticket, a brochure from Gelson’s, the remote control and a stuffed, carnival-prize banana with a cartoon smiling face (Okay, that’s somewhat exotic).

I have never had an orchid plant before. This one was a gift as a thank-you for my work with a local Topanga home-school group. I had been invited to share creation stories and Greek myths with the students and direct them in acting out the tales. We all had a pretty good time, as young teens tempted by a serpent and the pursuit of knowledge were banished from the garden and moved on east of Eden.

In later classes they transformed into Gods and Goddesses rising from the mortal world to the rare heights of Mt. Olympus, decreeing who will live and who will die while draped in shiny fabric sheets, heads adorned with wreaths and plastic crowns.

I named the plant Pandora, which means gift of the Gods. Unfortunately I, as with the original Pandora, had no practical knowledge of how to care for my gift. It seemed easy at first, the plant just sat there looking pretty and elegant on those tapering, tropical stems, and sometimes I was even inspired to clear the cluttered debris from the dining table as a tribute to her delicate beauty. I was advised to water her with an ice cube about once a week, which somehow always made me covet a martini. Then one day a flower fell.

In an attempt at horticulture, I have gone on line to research my charge and discovered I have in my care a Phalaenopsis. To be exact I have a Phalaenopsis Aphrodite or Moon Orchid. It has petals of cloud white, soft, looking like powder with a pale yellow center and etched, deep within, rather spidery looking pink streaks. As I looked closely, some of the stems from which the flowers bloom are turning brown and I fear soon all will fall, silently and softly, dropping like Pandora’s tears for having unleashed all those sorrows on our world.

A book I found at the library, The Orchid Thief, written by Susan Orlean, contains more facts and history about orchids than one would reasonably want to know and it became a national bestseller. Evidently, there is quite an orchid cult and there is danger of the unsuspecting or weak of mind to become enthralled with the plant to the point of obsession. Some plants sell for thousands of dollars and from time to time greenhouses are pillaged and accusations fly. Murders have been committed. Devotees dream of orchids, scheme to create new hybrids and long to one day see the elusive and mythical black orchid.

Not everyone likes orchids. Tennessee Williams, as a young man, compared his glimpse of a prostitute’s genitalia to that of a dying orchid, the shock of which he claimed to have never gotten over and hence remained rather frightened of the flower throughout his life. I don’t know how he got himself into such a situation, where he had no business being in the first place, for we know that Mr. Williams was not predisposed to vaginal admiration, but I like to think he must have been in an especially dark poet’s mood that day or came at it from the wrong angle. However, I see his point. Vividly.

I myself am not much of a delicate exotic. I’m more of a pumpkin, sort of round, jolly and bright. I attempt from year to year to grow the fruit in my own hardscrabble, fallen garden. Planting in the spring yielded nothing. Not one pumpkin seedling sprouted and I suspected gophers had enjoyed my efforts, as I noted little piles of dirt all over the place. Not much on persistence, I let it go. Then something came over me about two weeks ago, an obsession of sorts. Some inner voice sounded and through all the clatter and strum of daily life, I heard it clearly, “Plant pumpkins, plant pumpkins now!”

I made a special trip to find seeds. One pack left. I did the germination math and figured it would take 110 days. If I planted, right now, this very day, I could have a pumpkin for Halloween. Surveying the yard, I planned to spread out, plant everywhere; if gophers ate the seeds in one part of the yard perhaps they would leave the other part alone, (just a theory). In the fading sun, on a Topanga afternoon with tropical clouds turning color, I planted. Five sections were sown with seed. Five possible pumpkin patches. I was hopeful; I saw the future. And indeed, in just a few days little sprouts burst through that dry earth, some inner power telling them to raise their green leaves toward the sun and grow.

There are three possible culprits: gopher, snail and rabbit. Suddenly the sprouts were gone like bad magic, disappeared back into the ground, called down by the God of the Underworld to grace his halls, not mine. I guess he, Hades, makes a fourth suspect and formidable, but to a large part I think it is snails. I saw some of the leaves chewed and noticed those phosphorescent silver trails around the ravaged plant. In an imaginative attempt at preservation, I took to covering the remaining plants with plastic cups at night. I had cut out the bottom and placed them over the sprout to allow for light and growth and for a while it seemed to work until I saw the cups tipped over and the plant, eaten or gone. Perhaps all my garden pests were working in tandem and sharing the spoils; bunny knocking over cup and nibbling, snail slithering in and slurping, gopher munching from below, Dark God laughing.