the freezer in the garage is NOT self-defrosting. i don't know what we were thinking when we bought THAT. i've been putting off the job for a while, tried to sucker one of my sisters into coming over to help me with it as a birthday present, but she's too smart for that. she went out and BOUGHT me a present. crap. so i had to start preparing jax and bill for the job a week ago. you have to start early with them; otherwise, they won't help, citing the "previous notification rule." men. hrrrr.
anyway, the freezer is PACKED. i mean packed. ok. a lot of the space WAS taken up by the ice build-up. and frozen bananas. i'm telling you this so you hear it from me before bill tells you. i have a problem with throwing out bananas. i buy bananas at least three times a week, as i love bananas and must have at least one banana every day. the problem is that i only like them slightly tart. you know what i mean. just-turned-yellow-with-a-little-bit-of-green-at-the-stem ripe. when they turn all yellow, i might eat one in a bowl of rice krispies. but if they have even one little freckle just starting, they're freezer food. i cannot throw them out. i just can't.
bill and i both like to make banana bread, and i make the earth's greatest banana cake. yes i do. and banana pancakes. frozen bananas are perfect for baking. pop them in a freezer bag and offer them up to the freezer gods. evidently never to be seen again.
i started pulling stuff out of the freezer and putting it all in coolers and the inside fridge and "mr. avocado" as we call the garage fridge -- i think you can guess why. i made a HUGE mistake by heading in the house, leaving bill to continue pulling stuff out of the freezer. he tells me he pulled out at least 6 bags of frozen bananas. i thought it would be more, so i don't feel THAT silly. but he threw them out. thank god i didn't have to watch.
i also freeze leftovers like crazy. before i married almost 30 years ago, i was the primary cook in our household. it took me at least 5 years to figure out that i didn't have to cook 2 pounds of pasta for a meal. it drove bill crazy. but i got over that one. then kids came along, hockey, school activities, less time for cooking every single night. so i started cooking double meals when i cooked. and freezing the second meals. that and the way i make a pot of spaghetti sauce. i do not know how big the pot is -- it's a whopper. sauce making is a real production here that doesn't end until the 15 containers of sauce, meatballs, and sausage have been packed and frozen.
some of what we found in the freezer: 8 containers of sauce and meat, a tray of breaded beef cutlets (a treasure), 4 containers of cheese sauce for mac and cheese, spaetzle, bananas, 2 ham bones (another thing i cannot throw out), 6 containers of pasta e fagioli, a tray of pig from last year's pig roast (still good as i had it packed really well), a home-made pumpkin roll that somebody made for us, and -- eureka! -- the mother lode -- a container of my chicken paprikash. trust me. this is the best chicken paprikash you have ever tasted. if you had tasted it. trust me, matt and mark are salivating right now as they're reading this.
it's heating up on the stove right now. got to go. the rice may be done. sucks to be you.
Posted by Stacey at July 27, 2003 07:06 PMWHAT!!!! You get new contact information and you don't share it with me? I'm ticked! ;^)
=d
The way you make sauce is the way I make soup. I just can't make a small pot!
Posted by: Kathy at July 28, 2003 03:44 PMthus the pasta e fagioli containers, too, kath. btw, matt and mel forbid me from buying that huge copper soup pot in williams sonoma catalog for them. :(
-d: look at the first comment. it had old contact stuff, you know -- blogspot?
Posted by: stacey at July 28, 2003 04:10 PMwe don't have room for a big copper soup pot.
Posted by: melly mel at July 28, 2003 06:00 PMsomehow the end of that comment got cut off. it was supposed to say:
"we don't have room for a big copper pot. we could get rid of all our other pots to make room, but then we'd eat soup for the rest of our lives (and matt would die if he didn't get a cheeseburger every once in a while)!
Posted by: melly mel at July 28, 2003 06:37 PMmel: i was thinking the pot could have its own room. no?
Posted by: stacey at July 29, 2003 09:05 AMYou had a *pig* in your freezer?
And, yeah, you could make banana smoothies with those. Or, here's a thought, why not just buy 2 or 3 bananas at a time? You don't have to take the whole bunch of them, ya know. I do it, too, but I always forget to freeze them so before long I've got rotting bananas on my counter with some kind of tiny bugs circling overhead.
Posted by: deb at July 29, 2003 11:50 AMi'm afraid to admit to you, deb (veggiemama), that this was what was left from our pig roast last year. we are carnivores.
Posted by: stacey at July 29, 2003 01:26 PMI can't believe you are taunting us with all the good food talk and not supplying recipes for things!
Posted by: jenB at July 29, 2003 04:37 PM