[lindsay]

I have chicken spaghetti and barbecue beans with ground beef in the freezer for I don't know how long... maybe 9 months to a year on the chicken spaghetti and six months or so on the beans with beef. Eat it or toss it?

 

[freebs]

I would thaw it out and taste it first.

 

[Spirit Deer]

It will not poison you or make you sick, so if it tastes okay (or even if it doesn't) it's still safe to eat. So it comes down to whether or not it tastes acceptable to you.

If it's frosty, rinsing the frost off before thawing can improve the taste.

 

[CookieLee]

The longer we store food, the less nutritional value it has. The calories are still there (of course - wouldn't it be nice if we could destroy calories?) but the vitamins are seriously diminished. Dehydrating food destroys the most nutrients first. Canning is the second most likely culprit in the destruction of nutrients. Freezing is pretty gentle on food but food still degrades over time, even while frozen. And the flavor of the food can change, especially dependent on how it was stored. Even frozen foods pick up flavors for other foods in the freezer and will sometimes even take on that "frozen food" taste.

The spaghetti will probably fair the worst because pasta doesn't like to be frozen (ice crystals explode the cell walls in the wheat and makes the pasta mushy). Beans also don't like to be frozen but the fat in the dish might help it survive.

My experience has taught me that unless I intended to make frozen meals, then leftovers from the freezer aren't a very popular dinner. They weren't a favorite the first time around, they probably won't be well received as a defrosted re-run.