Alright, alright, so maybe not rich, but the freezer is a healthy cook’s best friend. Who needs diamonds, anyway? It can help save you tons of money and stick to healthy eating more often. And though you can use it any way you want, there are some tips and tricks to take full advantage of your freezer. Here are our favourite ways.

Get juiced up. Having wonderful, fresh juices is a true luxury, but sometimes you just can’t consume them in time. Rather than letting your delicious Fix or Reset go to waste, we highly recommend popping it in the freezer when it’s almost at expiration date. That way you can preserve it and its super-healthy vitamins and enjoy it at a later date. As long as you haven’t opened it and no air has gotten in, it will stay as fresh as the day you bought it. The particles in a juice won’t change once frozen, keeping everything from vitamins to minerals perfectly intact. We’d recommend storing them in your freezer no longer than 6 months (though we’d be surprised if you can resist it that long!).

Stock up. This is probably our absolute number one way to make use of our freezers. Store-bought stock and broth pale in comparison to the homemade stuff, so we like to take one Sunday a month and make an enormous batch of flavourful and nutritious vegetable stock (if you are not a strict vegan, there are myriad health benefits to bone broth that are worth checking out). We then freeze it in ice cube trays and then pop them into a re-sealable plastic bag once they’re solid. These are great for deglazing vegetables or adding an umami punch to homemade soup.

Become a smooth(ie) operator. If we make our smoothies at home – or if we pick up an extra of our favourite smoothie of the month from TCPJ in those final days – we like to store a few extras in the freezer for when emergency sugar cravings strike. Rather than reaching for candy bars or a pint of ice cream, we have The Shit or The Sinner on hand to satisfy and nourish, all at once.

Be scrappy. Here at The Cold Pressed Juicery, we tend to cook in a pretty vegetable-centric way. That means we’re often left with tons of vegetable scraps (sweet potato peels, onion skins and carrot tops). Rather than tossing those valuable flavour bombs, we like to toss them into a big bag and pop them in the freezer. Then when it’s our Sunday stock day, we use them to make the most delicious, waste-free stock ever.

Go green. Of course we’d never freeze the kale or arugula we planned to use in a salad, but freezing gorgeous, fresh greens you pick up from the farmer’s market is a super smart way to always have something green on hand for a soup or smoothie. We pre-rinse and dry them well before freezing them, as once they’re frozen, they’re nearly impossible to wash. Freezing your greens ensures you’ve got veggies at the ready no matter the occasion.

Let’s get that bread. As you might have guessed, we are not the biggest consumers of bread, but there are a few loaves that have captured our imagination. Rather than buying expensive and often not very delicious commercial “health” breads, we like to whip up a batch of The Life-Changing Loaf of Bread, a vegan, plant-based loaf that’s gluten- and yeast-free. Once it’s baked, we like to slice it up and store it in our freezer, tightly wrapped. It’s the perfect accompaniment to our Pea & Mint Soup or spread with a little hummus to go alongside our Middle Eastern Tabbouleh Salad.