I'm just finishing the batch that I grew two summers ago (habaneros and cayenne). I had them in the freezer all this time and they're fine. Don't expect the crunch of a fresh one, but I've been using them in salsas and sauces and my family is still around exclaiming how hot they still are. They're definitely a good storage commodity. Love em. Be well, Elliot

I think I'd keep the baby food in the refrigerator freezer. I envy your small freezer. Mine is just too big now that the kids are gone. It's half full of frozen water bottles. And, you might start thinking about this just because the freezer doesn't run as often when it's full. Freezeing water has also saved me during a couple of power outages. Once it was out for a day and a half due to a flood. I think I'd keep my baby food in the refridgerator where it's convenient. Currently I use my refridgerator freezer to hold ice trays, flours, cornmeal, and what I call tidbits. This is small containers of things like chopped ham, shredded beef and pork, onion, cooked chopped bacon, bell pepper, bread crumbs, my homemade pizza crusts. Tidbits are the things I can grab for a quick meal without having to run from one room to another. For example when I make biscuits, I'll put it off if I've got to down to the big freezer for flour to refill the canister. Everything else is pretty much in the big one. I have my freezer divided into three sections. Left is frozen veggies, middle is my prepared items, right is meat and poultry. Stuff like icecream goes on top where it fits. When I had kids at home I used to burry stuff like that or it would be gone in a day. I don't buy frozen pizza or other convenience foods anymore. I really don't do once a month cooking as such. I do batch cooking. If I make spaghetti sauce, I make enough to eat that day and two are frozen for later. Same with beans, rice, mashed potato etc. I also freeze cartons of cooked ground beef. I freeze prepared, uncooked burgers for DH to grill. I buy large peices of sirloin and make steaks and roasts. I cook a large quantity of pork or beef at one time so that I can freeze burritos or barbeque. You'll just have to play with it and see what works out for you. I like to cook but I also have other things to do. I end up cooking from scratch about three days a week. Other nights it's scrounge. That's DH's word for throw together some left overs or grab something already made from the freezer. Again I don't have kids around anymore so that makes a big difference in how much time I have to spend planning and preparing meals.

The food charts I have for how long you can keep bananas in the freezer gave no amounts of time, and one said "extended freezer time" - whatever that means (LOL). I guess the goal should be to use the frozen bananas in a timely manner (few months), but I was moving some things around in my refrigerator freezer and I found several ripe bargain bananas that were quick-frozen then placed in a FoodSaver bag, vacuum-sealed shut -- early last summer and promptly forgotten about. I made them into banana bread the other day for yet one more offering to the "throngs" for breakfast during their Christmas visit. When you vacuum-seal peeled bananas (or most food destined for freezer storage), they will last longer than in a typical storage bag because they are stored oxygen-free. Oxygen-free storage prevents the moisture inside the food from migrating from the surface of the food into the bag, drying out or creating ice crystals in the bag. A food science tidbit about using overly-ripe bananas for banana bread. When a banana bread recipe only calls for baking soda as the only chemical leavening, overly-ripe bananas are not as acid (6.5-7.0 pH) as a regular banana (4.6 pH) in order to react in partnership with the baking soda. The reaction may be a weak one resulting in a heavy banana bread. A good banana bread recipe, one that ensures adequate leavening, will use both baking powder and baking soda. If the recipe only has baking soda, make sure a portion of the bananas aren't overly-ripe, or there is another ingredient in the recipe that provides an acid ingredient. That could be some lemon juice added to the bananas to keep them from oxidizing and turning dark, orange juice, honey used as the sweetener, or yogurt, sour cream or buttermilk, which are all acid foods that will react with the baking soda. -Grainlady

FOAS, simple inquiry doesn't make a person sound like a jerk. I'm not really good at taking bird temperatures, so there may be some slop in my numbers, but when my probe reads 165, the chicken isn't fully cooked in my opinion. The juice may run clear but it's still red by the bones and that hey I'm not cooked here! texture. And the rest of the meat seems tough. Cooked until it's good and hot and it's just right. Cooked through, juicy and tender. Overcooked more than that and it gets stringy and gummy. I do better with times and temperatures than thermometers, however. But I'm taking a thermometer with me just to be sure. :) I'm sorry I forgot to say the weight, which is of course the most important factor. It isn't a gigantabird, though no old fashioned baby fryer. I'm pretty sure the label said under 2 lbs., but close enough to it that Linda's answer (thanks, Linda!) )will suffice. It's a tiny group of light eaters, the onion ring wisher among them. At one point it was going to be a bigger group, but then people left town, got sick, etc. Sleevendog, no time today, but I'm going to try your enpapillote method some time. Thanks, everybody!