I am one of the biggest culprits when it comes to stacking food into my freezer and forgetting about it. Well, not completely forgetting about it: I just don't always immediately use what I put in there. For instance, the other night I pulled out some chicken I had frozen in a freezer bag. For the life of me I couldn't remember how long it had been there. Was it still good? Were there any nutrients left in the pieces at all? Is that freezer burn I see?

I ended up thawing the chicken and making a great dish with it. No problems, fortunately. However, this experience got me to go through my freezer foods and begin to take careful inventory of what was there. I marked the most recent with dates, and gave an approximate shelf life for the other things.

Because I often shop at bulk food stores, I divide my freezer foods into small portions and put them in freezer bags. What I don't always remember to do is write the date on the bag. No excuse really, as most bags have a "date" strip on them, which makes them easy to write on. To keep me from making this mistake again, I have attached a black marking pen to my freezer as a reminder for me to mark the date.

Once the food is in the freezer, the next question that we often wonder is, "How long may I keep this food in a frozen state?" Fortunately, Tip Hero has come out with some answers. According to them, foods don't actually go "bad" languishing in our freezers. But over time, they will decrease in quality and the dreaded freezer burn may start to manifest itself. To help us get a handle on the "how long will this last" question, they have come up with the following "expiration" dates. I am going to cut this out and tape it to my freezer as a reminder!

Bacon: 1-2 months

Chicken pieces: 9 months

Ground meats: 3-4 months

Hot dogs: 1-2 months

Steak: 6-12 months

Butter: 6-9 months

Eggs (shelled): 12 months

Milk: 3 months

Leftovers (in general): 1-3 months

Bread: 1 month

Fruits and vegetables: 8-12 months