1KHO 833: Ultimate Meal Prep | Crystal Schmidt, Freeze Fresh Meal Prep

**Ginny Yurich** (0:00)
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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And I learned about something so cool that you can like freeze part of meals. And you can have these pictures. I'm holding it up, so if you're listening, you're not gonna see it. But it's all these like little frozen bundles of beautiful colored food. And the author of this book, which is called Freeze Fresh Meal Prep, it's meal starters, frozen meal starters and make ahead dishes for the freezer. Author Crystal Schmidt is here, creator of Whole Fed Homestead. And this is your second book about freezing foods and just making meals easier and more fresh. Crystal, welcome.

**Crystal Schmidt** (1:57)
Thank you so much.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:58)
All right, tell us. I mean, I don't really know anything about this. I'm trying to think if I frozen meals before, like a couple of times, not much.
So how did you get interested?

**Crystal Schmidt** (2:13)
How did I get interested? I have always loved freezing as a preservation method. It's always been my favorite just because it's quick and it's easy and it's accessible and the food tastes fresh. I always like to say that frozen food is fresh food because it just tastes, it literally tastes so fresh.
And when I started writing books about freezing-

**Ginny Yurich** (2:35)
Okay, wait, wait, wait. No, I need you to go one step back. Because I would say that I am not the type of person who has a favorite preservation method. So how do you become the type of person who has a favorite preservation method?

**Crystal Schmidt** (2:48)
I think just doing a lot of different preservation methods.

**Ginny Yurich** (2:53)
But like, is it because you're growing stuff? Is it because you're farmers marketing?

**Crystal Schmidt** (2:58)
For me, it's because I'm growing stuff. Yes, absolutely.
I live on 20 acres with my fella, and we try to grow and preserve as much of our own food as we can every year, without burning ourselves out and while still enjoying it.
And I just, I love preserving so much. I love taking seasonal abundance and turning it into year-round nourishment. There's just something about that that makes me feel so grounded and so connected to nature and to like a humanness that is disappearing. So I have done all of the preserving methods. I love them all too. But freezing for me is just so easy and so good. And there weren't a lot of, I think part of the problem is when I started writing freezer books, there weren't a lot of great freezer preservation resources out there. They were all very antiquated. They were all very, I don't know, uninspiring almost, just kind of old information. And so I wanted to make resources for people so that they could take the fresh stuff that they had, whether they grew it themselves or got it at a farmer's market, or whether you just bought a tub of spinach at the store and you're not going to use it up. That you can take those fresh ingredients and turn them into something that makes making a meal later easier and that's just really delicious. And that it's something that you want to eat.

**Ginny Yurich** (4:23)
Okay. Sorry that I keep going backwards.

**Crystal Schmidt** (4:26)