I am a big frozen food buyer so this month I've been scouting for coupons and in-store discounts for all my favorite frozen meals and desserts. With it being National Frozen Food Month, many grocery stores will have substantial discounts on a variety of frozen foods.If you plan to stock up maximize your savings by checking newspaper and grocery store Web sites for current promotions, then organize your coupons to coordinate with the store promotions.
Tip: It is also National Noodle Month and National Peanut Month so look for deals on pasta and peanut butter.
Now for a little trivia :
Who Invented Frozen Food?
Answer: Several individuals, but most credit Clarence Birdseye.
As told by the Library of Congress, many people developed innovative food-freezing techniques, including Enoch Piper, William Davis, and Daniel E. Somes. However, Clarence Birdseye is credited with inventing in 1924 the quick freezing method, which produces the type of frozen foods that we know today.
While working as a fur trader in Labrador, NF, Canada, Birdseye discovered that the fish that he and the local Inuit caught froze almost immediately after being pulled from the water. He was delighted to discover that the fish was just as delicious when thawed out months later. From this experience, he theorized that food must be frozen very quickly in order for it to retain its taste and texture.
Birdseye was right. Before quick-freezing came along, foods were frozen at a fairly slow rate. This caused large ice crystals to form, which ruptured the cell membranes of the food. When the food was defrosted, the ice crystals melted and water would leak out, taking with it the food´s flavor and texture.
Birdseye developed two methods for quick freezing foods, both of which employed the innovation of packaging the food beforehand which resulted in creating 168 patents. These covered not only the freezing technique but also the packaging, type of paper used, and related innovations.
Photo Credit: Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress.