Sunday 10 September 2017

Defrosting the freezer

is definitely NOT one of those jobs I enjoy. Nevertheless I am about to embark on the adventure this morning. It is a job I like to get out of the way as quickly as possible.
I am not one of those household fanatics who keeps an exact list of what I have in the freezer. I know just one person like that. She has everything arranged in an incredibly orderly fashion. It is all labelled and dated and used in rotation - and she defrosts the freezer once every eight weeks. Her fridge gets scrubbed out weekly, the bathrooms are done every day. Her hobby is housework. She has, apparently, nothing else to do.
I have too many other things to do.
I do know approximately what is in the freezer. I also know approximately where to find it. The occasional thing escapes me. I put it all down more to a reasonably good memory and, perhaps, good luck rather than good housekeeping.
The freezer is elderly. I talk nicely to it. I want it to keep putting along for a while yet. 
We bought it when there were still six of us at home. It allowed my mother, who did most of the cooking then, to cook up meals at weekends ready for the rest of the week. She worked full time as the head of a school so this was important when she didn't like other people in the kitchen. When the Senior Cat retired the freezer also started to contain more garden produce. It was my job to prepare and freeze that. I have gone on doing it, although the last few  years have seen less produce. The Senior Cat has  been able to do less gardening and looking after him has meant I don't have as much time either. The garden is his hobby too. I don't like to interfere. 
Now the freezer contains things like "emergency" meals. There are things like soup or stew or home made pasties that I only need to defrost if I have been out.  Such things will be useful tomorrow when I need to be dismantling the displays at the show grounds and the Senior Cat will need something that can just be heated in the microwave oven. There is ice cream too -  something the Senior Cat is fond of and I will admit I like it. This year there were enough plums to freeze some - but not enough apricots. The apricot tree is old and now needs to be replaced - but we both hate seeing a tree come out.
I wonder how busy families cope without a freezer. Yes, we have had to pay for the electricity to run it but it has saved both money and time. We haven't had to buy pre-prepared meals in packs either.

1 comment:

Helen Devries said...

Clearing out our freezer reveals UFOs...unidentifiable frozen objects... which are then placed in the freezer over the fridge and eventually examined.