I think you can learn a lot about someone when you take a look inside their freezer. You’ve got this limited space where you can store all the most important foods to you to whip out a meal or enjoy a tasty cold treat in a moment’s notice so I think it’s fun to know what people do with this limited space. Are you an organized meal planner who stocks it with ready-made meals to save time and money on busy weekend nights? If you are a sweet tooth like me, your freezer might be mostly filled with your favorite guilty pleasure desserts like ice cream, cookie dough, ice cream bars, frozen cheesecake and shmancy popsicles. 

I thought it would be fun to share and talk about what your favorite few items are that you’ve always got to have stocked in the freezer at all times. Of course you’ve got your basic freezer staples like dinner meals and desserts and perhaps you’ve carved out a chunk in the corner of the freezer for healthy items like veggies and smoothie-making stuff. Here are my ultimate freezer faves in each of these categories and I would love to hear what your freezer essentials are too.

This whole thought stemmed from opening my freezer and being so dang excited to see the very best freezer item we could ever have: authentic, shipped frozen from Chicago, deep dish Lou Malnati’s pizza. My husband and I have ordered it once a year for the last few years where we get 6 frozen pizzas overnight shipped with dry ice straight from Chicago and enjoy them for special occasions. It ends up being about $20 a pizza, which is a really reasonable price compared to any good pizza place you might go to. These frozen pizzas cook up wonderfully and you feel like you are right there in the Windy City grabbing a bite to eat before going to watch the Cubbies play. I usually make up a side of my buttery, canned green beans with some garlic bread or cheesy bread and it is the perfect meal at home that hits the spot every time. 

Other noteworthy dinner options for us are basically anything from Trader Joe’s freezer section. They have the best frozen meals, like their famous mandarin orange chicken. Lately I can’t get enough of their frozen Korean BBQ meal called the Bibimbap Bowl. It is so dang delicious and flavorful--you should try it if you can. 

Now it’s time to talk about everyone’s favorite items from the freezer: desserts! I think the main frozen treat people love to stock in their freezer the most is, of course, ice cream. Your go-to frozen dessert is a very personal choice. For most people, I think it’s ice cream. But for others it might be frozen cheesecake to have at a moment’s notice, or cookie dough, or perhaps you're an ice cream bar kinda person. We are definitely ice cream people around here, but we also love to stock Helados, which are super creamy ice cream popsicles from Mexico, with delicious flavors like mango and coconut. 

We also love It’s It Bars, which are ice cream cookie sandwiches with crunchy oatmeal cookies paired with vanilla ice cream. They originated in California, but I know they carry them in some other states as well.

And lastly, we’ve got the all-important but not very sexy vegetables. There’s nothing really that exciting about these but they are picked when they are perfect and ripe and are the easiest way to fill your plate with veggies at as many meals as possible so I love having tons of these in my freezer at all times. 

What are your favorite few items you always have to have stocked in your freezer? I’d especially love your favorite frozen meals and your favorite frozen guilty-pleasure dessert you always have to have? I love trying new foods, especially if someone claims it as a must-have in their own precious limited freezer space :) Please share your thoughts in the comments below.