The Great Freezer Purge of 2023
The freezer can be a magical place. A place where decay is suspended, at least for a season. Possibly indefinitely depending on your standards. Hell, it seems like every few years some ancient remains emerge from the permafrost to give us clues about our forgotten history and sometimes to call into question what we think we know. I’m talking tens of thousands of years old. An excellent testament to the power of preservation by freezing.
The freezer can also be a horrible, terrifying place where food is transformed into things that it should never have lived long enough to become. I remember a Grandma who shall remain nameless pulling out food of unknown origin and age from the abyss of her freezer to prepare an impromptu meal for all of the grandkids. I still don’t have the foggiest notion what it was. It was pale and amorphous. The pained looks of those who partook was all that I needed to see to signal me to steer clear of the mystery mush. I’d like to be able to blame it on senility or dementia, but I’m sure that she knew exactly what she was doing and was laughing her ass off on the inside.
Getting to the point, it is good practice to periodically spend a little time in the freezer. No, not some new health trend that is guaranteed to help suspend the aging process. “Just climb in for 15 minutes a day and watch the years melt away!” Not quite that literal.
Seriously, it’s amazing how easy it is for things to get lost in a freezer. Dates and labels magically disappear. Things get disorganized. It’s as if a malicious arctic gremlin is actively working against you. So what should you do about it? Periodically, you should take everything out, see what you have and how old it is, and organize it. Simple. It just takes a little time. Wear gloves if you like. You now have the start of a less chaotic frigid pantry. Once you remember what you have, you can make a plan to put it to use. Some things may be relegated to animal feed or the compost bin. Don’t cry over the fallen! It’s just part of the circle of life. Once things reach a certain point, clinging to them earns you your hoarder ribbon., which, of course, you will hang on to forever.
Yessir! The freezer is a magical place. And I’m pretty sure that we have more than ten of them. And two walk in coolers. I’m not even kidding. What? We have a lot of kids and a farm. We’d have to have more than a dozen for me to even to begin to worry that things are getting out of hand. Obviously, with that many freezers, we have a proper community of arctic gremlins. Do me a solid and don’t tip off the government. I’d hate to find out that they’re a protected species. Ignorance is bliss.
This last week I began the process of purging the freezers so that we can get ready for next growing season. It probably will take longer than that to get it done, but mindfulness and persistence are the keys to getting this kind of task done. You know the kind. Those tasks that are fluid and never really come to an end, New things are constantly being added. And moved. And messed up.
Freezer one is officially cleared out. At least it was the last time that I looked. What was in this freezer you might ask? This one had pork bellies, pork jowls, and a smorgasbord of organ meats. The fate of these items? The organ meats were converted into dog food. The jowls and bellies are now a step closer to becoming bacon. The jowls are curing via equilibrium method and the bellies are undergoing a traditional salt and brown sugar cure. In a few weeks they will be ready to be smoked.
I’m looking forward to see how far I can get with the process of decluttering the freezers in the next few weeks. What kind of things might we find? Well-labeled and organized meats. Not-so-well-labeled meats. Baggies full of vegetable cuttings set aside for veggie broth. Baggies of fruit set aside for vinegar making. The year’s harvest of elderberries, blackberries and black raspberries awaiting their conversion to the finished product, whatever that will end up being. Pesto. Pre-prepared meals. Frozen veggies. Who knows what else?
Tips for maintaining an organized freezer:
Label everything with what is in the container and when it was put there. Even if you’re absolutely certain that you’ll remember what it is and when you put it there. The gremlins and the squirrels are real.
Store similar things together. Veggie section. Fruit section. Meat section.
Regularly reevaluate and reorganize.
When in doubt, throw it out.
What is the oldest thing that you’ve found in your freezer?
What is the most terrifying thing that you’ve found in your freezer?
