Freezers hold foods at -20C, extending the shelf-life of most ingredients by months. It is hard to imagine how people coped without it back then. The content of one's freezer speaks volumes about her eating habits, cooking styles, and really, the lifestyle. My aunt had a box freezer in her garage that kept bags after bags of microwavable hamburgers and hot pockets. There were also tons of juice concentrate and frozen vegetables. The content of my freezer changed quite a bit over the years. When I had a car and groceries stores were not within walking distance, I usually shopped on weekends and bought meat in bulk packages. I kept lots of frozen beef, pork, and chicken for use on any day of the week.
Now I don't have a car, and I pass by a supermarket everyday after work. I shop for food almost daily. This way the food is always fresh, and I avoid leaving old produce in the fridge and letting them go to waste. So presumably my freezer would have more room now. That is really not the case. Here are the main items:
Chicken stock: I have (at the current count) 11 tupperware containers full of homemade chicken stock. This I simply cannot live without. The standby roast chicken dinner cannot be served without a good gravy. The coal miner's wife's low budget dinner pasta alla carbonara also requires excellent stock.
Chicken bones: can't have the above without it.
Nuts and rice: Supposedly nuts stay fresh longer in the freezer. Rice at room temperature sometimes breeds rice bugs, which are yucky.
Ice cream maker: Yup, I got the cheap kind. The bowl must be frozen before use.
Starbucks Almond Fudge Coffee Ice Cream: this is constantly stocked in my freezer...
Frozen buns: I get these from Chinatown markets. These are quick, easy, and fairly nutritious breakfast food.
Peas: One of very few veggies that freeze well. In fact, freshly shelled peas' sugar content drops dramatically fast. Unless you plan to shell your own peas from farm fresh peapods, frozen baby peas are likely much more tender and sweeter than fresh ones.
Other odds and ends: over-ripe bananas -- when I collect 4 bananas I make a loaf of banana bread; vodka - uh, not mine; extra pie dough; shrimp shell and heads - leftover from peeling shrimp and are excellent in fish stocks.
What's in your freezer?
Comments
We use chicken broth (canned), it's NOT the same, but we are lazy. We only do real chicken stock about once a week.
How do you possibly do real chicken stock once a week?? It takes me at least a month or 2 to collect enough chicken carcasses to make a big pot of chicken stock. Then the stock usually lasts long enough for me to collect the next round of chicken bones.
Maybe it's not chicken stock my mom makes then, she calls it Gao Tang (tall soup?). I don't know what's in it...