Freezers and Thawing Out

We have two freezers: the bottom compartment of our kitchen refrigerator, and the larger one in our downstairs garage’s side-by-side fridge.

Containers abide in them so long we might well be preserving mammoth meat.

The missus is more tolerant of this than I am. Every so often after making a large batch of soup I carry a number of containers down the circular stairs connecting our kitchen to the garage, only to open the freezer door and find I have to rattle my way past jars of frozen stock, bags of berries we harvested, cookie dough, veggie pizza advertised as being better than other frozen pizzas, three types of bread, various well-meaning tofu preparations, et cetera.

For two years running the missus has gone to a coworker’s annual party where they grill pasilla peppers until wonderfully blistered, then plunge them in ice water, slice them open, de-seed them, and pass them out for the partygoers to use. And they are delicious, when I remember that they are down there. We still have the individual baggies from the first year.

I vow to take inventory. To report my findings, and encourage actually using what’s preserved before the fine snow of freezer frost obscures it. And now that I’m home full-time, it’s time to do it.

It feels like my life is thawing out to some degree, as well. For so long I’ve just shoved things in boxes, waiting for “the day.” Well the day has come. I ransacked the upstairs freezer for what was worthy of the long-term deep freeze, chilled my arms juggling it downstairs, excavated the freezer, and brought five containers upstairs to thaw in our fridge.

I really like slowly thawing things in the fridge. It’s a little energy win-win. As they thaw they help the fridge stay cold. And a day or three later, they can be used.

It’s taking me a while to thaw out, too. Or perhaps better to say I’m still de-compressing from all those years on the job. I remind myself that there is plenty of time now. To live in the present.

To wit: I have a black bean soup recipe that would probably benefit from some of those pasilla peppers. My mock feijoada soup–Yum! I’m going to go pull them out of the freezer now. I used to inform the clerks which court cases to schedule for oral argument. Now I’m planning soup. Woo hoo!