Apparently, frozen mango chunks are to me what potato chips are to other people. One is just not enough! LOL
I can’t eat ice cream, but sometimes I want a sweet, frozen treat. For me, frozen mango chunks are the perfect option. Healthy, tasty, and soft enough, even when frozen, to immediately indulge in any time the mood hits.
To my delight, a local store offers my sweet treat in 48-ounce bags! They aren’t exactly cheap, but with so many food allergies and sensitivities, frozen mango chunks are still a great option for me.
However, I discovered the hard way that I can very easily mindlessly devour an entire 48-ounce bag in 1-2 hours.
I know, right?
I am not an emotional eater and I don’t have a portion control problem.
Clearly, though, I have a very real mindless snacking problem! At least when it comes to frozen mango. I don’t have this problem with bulk raisins or bulk Ghiradelli dark chocolate chips. One handful of either is perfectly satisfying and I stop eating.
When I wanted a quick snack today, I just grabbed the whole, brand new bag of mango out of the freezer and grabbed a few chunks at a time out of it while I was using my laptop.
I was just going to eat a little then put the bag back in the freezer.
But before I realized it, I had polished off the whole bag.
THE WHOLE BAG!!!!
While mangoes are healthy, I don’t think devouring an entire 48 ounces in basically one sitting is a good thing.
It certainly isn’t good for my wallet or budget!
I had planned on that lasting me 2 weeks.
It lasted less than one day.
So, I pulled the other bag I had out of the freezer and opened that baby up.
Not to devour it, too, but to figure out a good portion size for snacking. 
I looked at the nutrition label on the back to get an idea of what the manufacturer claimed was a serving size and used that as a starting place for what was realistic for my snacking purposes.
According to the package, there are 10 1-cup servings in each bag.
After measuring it out to be sure, I decided one cup was a good snack size for me. I then pulled 10 snack size freezer zipper bags.
Bonus: I don’t have to eat the whole one cup of mango chunks when I want a snack. I can eat less and put the rest back in the freezer for another time.
One cup is just my pre-determined snack maximum amount.
I labeled the zipper bags and got to work filling them. I now have 10 snack bags packed and ready to go. So, just shy of two-weeks worth of my cold sweet treat.
I froze them flat and then stuffed them into the various nooks and crannies in the small freezer of my apartment-size refrigerator.
Based on this, I now know exactly how much I need to buy each month (3 48-ounce bags) and can fit that into my budget. No random guessing and either having too much or not enough.
Because I will be doing this every month, I can wash and reuse the labeled zipper bags I made up today for my frozen mango chunks. And I have enough zipper bags still in the box to cover the rest of the 3 bags of mango chunks I buy next month. So I won’t have an extra zipper bag expense.
This is a perfect example of taking a negative and turning it into a positive. Instead of beating myself up for discovering a problem I didn’t even know I had, I took a pro-active approach to it. Now I am not only going to be getting a handle on that, but what I’m doing is helping keep my budget in check, too.
Win-win.
-Kara
Beautiful Dangerous Freedom 