Ten on Tuesday

Ten Things in My Freezer Right Now

This should be rather interesting, that is writing it should be rather interesting, because I didn't actually look in my freezer before I left for work this morning, so I can't name with certainty everything that's in it.

1. Ice. Let's get the madly boring stuff out of the way first. Our fridge has an icemaker and a little chute through which you can dispense ice without opening the door. I used to think icemakers were unbelievably bourgeois, but the fact that you don't have to open the freezer to 1) take the ice-cube trays out 2) put them back in full of water 3) take them out again to (if possible) get the ice out and put it either in your drink or the ice tray, which with luck you took out at the same time, must count for something.
   
2. Cold packs. These are a wonderful invention, although freezing bottles of water and putting them in with your beer or your sandwich works too.
   
3. Chicken. I'm not sure what part of the chicken, but I know there's some in there because there always is.
   
4. Packed lunches for me. These usually consist of lentils and rice, two things that are nutritious, especially if eaten together, on the list of things I'm officially allowed to eat, easy to make, and, last but not least, cheap. I may or may not have mentioned that we are in the midst of major house repairs, have been since that big rainstorm at the end of March, actually, when a leak in a window led to various unfortunate discoveries that in turn morphed into basically rebuilding the house from the outside in. Actually the inside is fine, for the most part, but the outside is, or at this point I should probably say was, one vast expanse of dry rot assisted by the occasional carpenter ant. (One of these days I'll show you pictures.) After a couple of months of this I drew up a household budget, something we'd never had before, to see where our money was going and if we could manage to keep more of it... well, keep is not really the operative word there, so much as reallocate. I was astounded to discover the extent of our fixed expenses, meaning that flexible expenses, the easy ones to cut, take up only about a quarter of the budget, meaning that economies that I had always thought too small to matter... matter. Thus packed lunches.
   
5. Waffles. I haven't gotten to the point of making these myself yet. There's such a thing as overkill.
   
6. Bread. No one else in the house likes my favorite kind, so it's either freeze it or frequently find that the loaf I had eaten only two slices of has turned into a science project. Not that I have anything against science, mind you, but I'd prefer not to sacrifice perfectly good bread to it. See small economies above.
   
7. Applesauce. I had never made it before a few weeks ago, when I took out my trusty food mill with the hand crank, very similar to the one my mother had except for the plastic parts, and started cranking my way through the results of this year's apple-picking spree. It's very easy, and the results are good.
   
8. Apple pie filling. This year I am not going to be caught short at Christmastime.
   
9. Blackberry puree. The only drawback to blackberries is too many seeds, so I separate fruit from seeds with the abovementioned food mill. The resulting puree can become sweet duck sauce or chutney, or probably several other things I haven't thought of yet.
   
10. Something extremely inedible. Remember #10 on my fridge list? We go to the dump on Saturday. If I find the offending item in the fridge on Sunday, it's spending the week in the freezer.