Whirlpool Freezer

Jeremy and I are very excited because we now have a freezer in our basement to store any of the fruits and vegetables we get from our garden or CSA this summer, and any grass-fed beef, poultry, pork, etc, we buy locally over the summer and fall.  We had been planning on buying a freezer sometime this summer before we started freezing too many things, and my good friend Daphne had a great idea to look at classifieds for freezer.  Well after she mentioned it, I jumped on Craiglist and found an add for a freezer in Longmont near us, that was brand new but had some scratches.  It is a silver Whirlpool, 17.7 cubic square feet upright freezer. It’s also an energy efficient energy star compliant model which should only add $6 to our monthly electricity bill,  according to the manufacturer.

We drove up to Longmont one night last week and took a look at it.  The shop we bought it from was a small run down looking store with used appliances and ones like these that are dinged up but still new.  We decided on the spot to take it, it normally retails for $1300 at Sears but they only wanted $450 for it.  The scratches on the front are hardly noticeable and other than that it looked new.  We had the poor delivery guy come up to our house and get it into the basement for us, if they knew how difficult it was to get things into our basement they would have charged us more than the $45 we paid.  It took the one guy they sent two hours to get it down there, but it is there now and all set up and cold, and in our basement our light is so dim you can’t even tell there are scratches on it.

We’ve now already cleaned out our little freezer above the refridgerator and moved most of the stuff down to the basement.  Jeremy found a good deal on grass-fed beef just in time for us to restock and get it into the new freezer (he’ll be posting more about that later).  If you live in the Denver metro area and are looking for a freezer you might check this place out, they had two more like the one we bought.  The store looks a little sketchy at first but came through for us!

This is the last of my “boost your immunity” posts and luckily the swine flu hasn’t been much of an issue in the US.  Our last and favorite way for boosting immunity is our breakfast smoothies.  I know I’ve already posted about these, but I really believe that they help keep me healthy.  When Jeremy and I have been traveling or when we are out of the ingredients and don’t eat these every day we tend to get sick more frequently.  So what’s in these that is helping keep us healthy?

First, we are getting around 8 servings of fruit split two ways between Jeremy and I, so around four servings of fruit each in our breakfast smoothies.  We also put raw honey in our breakfast smoothies which alone is good for you (see my previous post about it).  We add flax seed oil which I’ve read the omega-3′s in it are also good for your immune system health.  Blueberries are the #1 fruit for antioxidants, followed by cranberries, and strawberries.  We put blueberries, cranberry juice and strawberries in our breakfast smoothie and get a bunch of antioxidants every day.  Antioxidants help your immune system by eliminating free radicals, and can also help eliminate cancer cells and have a lot of other health benefits as well.  Strawberries and orange juice have tons of vitamin C (a cup of strawberries has the same amount of vitamin C as a cup of orange juice).  There is debate over whether vitamin C actually stops colds but in some instances after you already have a cold it has been shown effective.  Cranberry juice has anti-microbial properties as well as being the juice highest in antioxidants.

The best part about the breakfast smoothies is you can swap out whatever fruit you want and pretty much any real fruit you put in there is going to taste good and be good for you.  And since we put mostly whole fruit in our smoothies instead of all juices with sugar and ice cream like they do at smoothie stores it is a good way to get a bunch of servings of fruit without it seeming like a chore to get your 2-4 servings a day.  If you substitute out other fruits and want information on the ways it benefits you check out the World’s Heathiest Foods website and search for the fruit you’ve substituted, I’ve found a lot of good information on it, and they are run by an independent non-profit that’s goal is to keep people informed of the latest research on nutrition in foods.