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By the lovely Grace Farris.
P.S. Honest vacation postcards and summer clothes.
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Mango Talenti
Impossible (always)
Baguette
GIANT box of mozzarella sticks (teen Door Dash)
Regarding the mystery thing in tin foil – I highly recommend the freezer tours on nytcooking insta. The fridge tours are great, but watching somebody else dig through their bonkers freezer is validating. They also keep random nubs & have precarious stacks of whatnot!
The foil covered item is emergency cake.
Wild Argentinian shrimp from TJ’s for quick meals, ice, tangerine bars ( Outshine), frozen peas, bag of Parmesan rinds, bag of chicken bones ( need to make stock), butter, salted and unsalted ( I bake, but live alone so not often. Also when making pie crust; frozen butter , food processor, so easy). Bottle of Limoncello from Rome airport’s duty free, almost empty bought in 2023 sister trip. Frozen pineapple and bananas for smoothies. Batch of homemade cannellini beans, ground venison and probably other stuff that’s been in there too long.
Hidden among the dino nuggets and various foods in our chest freezer is a bag of (very old!!!) breast milk that I cannot bring myself to toss! The thought of throwing it in the trash makes me weepy.
I have one of these too! My husband recently found it and I was like do. not. toss. 😆 (our youngest is 4)
Perhaps thawing and pouring into a space in the earth that means something to you, expressing gratitude and pride for what you did and made, and thanks to the earth and all within who made your contribution possible. Then offer this final expression of nourishment from this phase or your life back to the land. And go ahead and cry too. Because it’s several Everests you climbed, and continue to climb as an adult and a parent.
Thank you for the laughs!
I’d add the yearly unopened jar of pimentos.
I also have Lego mini figures frozen in ice cube trays. My kids do this for some reason.
Hahahaha
this is frozen pizza slander! some frozen pizza is pretty dang good!
I don’t think anyone is arguing this point 😅
Frozen samosas are a staple in my house. I get the cocktail size large pack and they are perfect for rounding out a packed school lunch or for an evening snack or even to take to kids soccer games. Three minutes in the air fryer and they are good to go.
I need to know more about the frozen samosas.
I just received a Wildgrain order so now the freezer has fabulous bread.
Basil leaves in olive oil, prep for pesto
Veg cuttings for stock
Whole ginger for zesting
Corn cobs for stews
Shrimp
Trader Joe boxed rices, variety ravioli and mochi
The freezer wrapped item is usually flower and garden seeds
I couldn’t do without a freezer because I was raised by a very frugal mother who always took 3 of anything on sale. If I like it, I stock up.
My elderly mother, who lives by herself and really doesn’t cook, just bought TEN ears of corn to put in her freezer because they were on sale!
We are freezer twins. I have left over bread crusts too that I blend for crumbs. Also had frugal mother.
As a teen, I would tease her about the stockpile (cans of ground coffee, bags of sugar, canned tuna, boxes of pasta) but when I was in college, pinching pennies and choosing my cars gas fill up vs eating, stopping at Moms for a kitchen dive was always a home run. I’m defmy mother’s daughter today. If I like a particular shoe, I buy 2. I’m never unable to pull a meal together from bits.
I live in Alaska and it seems my freezers are a little wilder: salmon, halibut, caribou, seal, whale, salmonberries, blueberries, tundra tea. All harvested by my family or friends. In addition to commercially available groceries. Though my kids regularly complain that it’s full of “ingredients” vs “food”.
Haha- my son always teased me about being an ingredients household. Then he left for college and I greatly reduced my cooking-happy with a salad most days (sidenote, one of the wonderful perks of kids moving out if you don’t enjoy cooking!) then he came home during break and he was like “damn mom, i’m fine with making things from scratch but, where is the scratch?!” Now I make sure to go to the store before he comes home and shuffle things around so it looks like we have more than lettuce and cucumbers!
How amazing to be able to do that! Could I ask what is tundra tea?
Tundra tea is known in some areas as Labrador tea. Its fancy name is Rhododendron groenlandicum, according to “Discovering Wild Plants” by Janice J. Schofield.
Dreamy.
Our fridge is all about the meal planning. When we make pierogi or gnocchi I’ll make extras and freeze them raw to thaw in the boiling water. Or meatballs to be browned then frozen so they thaw in the sauce. Or veggie scraps for broth-making (and said broth) because it makes even a 30-minute soup taste like it’s been cooking in the stove all day.
Also throw in all the extra berries from going picking with the kids each summer. Strawberries, blueberries, peaches, blackberries. Later all go into smoothies or cobblers or crisps. Nothing like a hint of summer in the cold cold winter to remind us that the sunshine will return again.
Frozen dumplings from Shan Dong – handmade, come in bags of 50, can absolutely save a dinner
Hahaha So true – ALL I can see are the ice cream bars when I look into the freezer and happen to have some in there. (We don’t always, because — seriously, they never last.)
Huh. Except for the samosas, this is exactly what my office freezer has piled in it, down to the mystery thing in foil, because why attach a label? Gah…coworkers.
Frozen pre-cooked, deveined shrimp are easy to thaw and can be used in a variety of way. Whenever I make meatballs, I’ll make extra to freeze.
I definitely misread samosas as Samoas and thought, hmm, those should definitely be number 1. I still might think that of samosas, lol.
Frozen Samoas are awesome. Even better than frozen Thin Mints.
Oh, that’s cilantro in the foil!
I don’t know man—my kids eat these frozen buttermilk waffles that smell AMAZING. Can’t attest to taste (i can’t tolerate the gluten), so maybe they are just good smelling cardboard?
I was going to say the same. Don’t knock the frozen cardboard.
Thankfully you can actually get gluten free frozen waffles now that are pretty delicious!
We got Souper Cubes last Christmas, and they’ve really helped us store more leftovers, which are sometimes humdrum and sometimes very exciting. They’re great for soup, obviously, but we’ve realised how many things we can freeze. Leftover bolognese, leftover chicken stock, shredded chicken with a bit of the slow cooker juice to make it freeze into a block, etc. Tonight we’re having pizza with a portion of pizza sauce that we froze the last time we made pizza.
Love these!
I also love these! I freeze leftover veggies in them sometimes too. Meats , beans. Anything, truly. I know I could just use a regular container but these make me feel efficient and stuff doesn’t spill.
This is SO spot on! Especially the mistery thing in foil… ;-) and samosas, why don’t I think of that more often?! Occasionally, in mine also some grandma-made delicacy makes an appearance and it sprints straight to #1 position.
The way we have multiple boxes of Trader Joe’s Fruit Frenzy Bars stacked submarine-style like they’re torpedo tubes to be emptied into the vast ocean of my need for Trader Joe’s Fruit Frenzy Bars, friends.
Speaking of freezer pizza, I have to share a hack that makes costco cauliflower pizza absolutely decadent: first, pre-heat a pizza stone in the oven (I take it out once the oven’s around 300 fahrenheit). Next, flip the pizza over (with the plastic covering still on), peel back the plastic, and brush olive oil all over the bottom of the pizza. Then (carefully!) flip it back upright, remove the rest of the plastic, and put it on the stone. I like to doctor it at this point with extra parmesan, herbs, hot pepper flakes, what have you. Then cook it (425 for13 mins usually) and when you think it’s done, lift it up and check to see if it’s browned on the bottom a bit. What this does is melt the cheese that holds the cauliflower crust together and fry the bottom of the pizza a little bit. OMG!
How about what I found in our freezer the other day: the body of my child’s deceased fish, in cold storage awaiting his funeral?
Hahahah
Lol what a classic! I currently have a huge bug in a glass jar on my counter. The joys of three little boys
We have a guinea pig in the freezer door awaiting burial. RIP Jenny.
Amazing, thank you for the laugh
Oh my god I would die if there were a frozen guinea pig in my freezer. Parents really are soldiers.
Omg this reminds me of, newly graduated, drinks at a co-workers house. I opened the freezer and there his huge dead snake. Awaiting burial. (The huge alive one was still in the tank.)
Joanna, we are seriously going to need a “What do you have you in your freezer?” post.
#1 for us: Trader Joe’s chicken cilantro wontons
Came here to say, 100% match for graces freezer but sub TJ’s dumplings for the samosas
I hadn’t bought a frozen pizza in well over a decade, but I recently bought a margherita one made by the brand Table 87 that was actually pretty good! And smaller, which is nice since I can’t eat a lot at once, so it’s great paired with a side salad.
My number 4 would be frozen chicken strips. Cause I’m eight.
Chicken nuggets are a mainstay in our childless house! This summer, a high quality salad bag with chopped nugs on it is the hot-weather low-cook meal on constant repeat
Have you tried the Just Bare nuggets? They are really good!
facts.
Grace nailed this one for me–I’m sorely in need of good freezer vibes, as mine is on the blink and I just defrosted it in hopes it will get through the next few days until the part the repairman said he needs comes in. Until then, top of my freezer list is ICE CUBES.
Always the mystery foil! If I’m lucky I remember to label it with item and date. But I usually don’t!
Happy to see frozen samosas recognized for the staple that they are. As long as we have samosas in the freezer, we can have a quick, snacky meal or even a low-key party. Yes to Samosas….and cardboard waffles!
Ha so good. We’re in the phase where every now and then we discover a random bag of frozen breastmilk stashed away somewhere. Particularly if I’m making a curry and could have sworn I had coconut milk…
If we are ranking by shelves, mine is:
Top shelf: very old ice (it’s winter here)
Middle shelf: frozen rice, frozen cheese, frozen friee rice
Bottom shelf: 4 packs of frozen peas (toddler mom life)
ha. grace hits it every time.
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