"freezer" news and stories

Last night I had some people over for dinner. Despite the fact that I got a late start on the main dishes, everything turned out perfectly and a good time was had by all. The only slightly-embarrassing moment in the entire evening came when, before I could stop him, my friend's husband opened my freezer in pursuit of ice for his drink (I had forgotten to put any out).

The door open, he stood and gaped for a moment and said, " Who eats all this food?" I quickly tried to explain that I like to keep a fairly stocked freezer so that I can pull meals together easily. I also tend to have three or four varieties of nuts, some summer fruit and homemade chicken broth stashed away as well. He shrugged and said, "Often when you open our freezer, all you see in there is a bottle of Skyy Vodka."

The picture above is my very own freezer, complete with half a bag of Trader Joe's string beans, a pound of chicken legs from Whole Foods and more frozen chicken broth than you can shake a stick at. In return, I want to know, what do the rest of you have in your freezer? Please share the mundane the quirks as inquiring minds want to know (and be assured that they aren't all that strange).

I like nuts. I like them toasted in salads, baked into muffins and tossed with roasted vegetables (toasted walnuts with oven-roasted brussel sprouts is heavenly). What I don't like about nuts is how easily they go bad if you don't store them correctly. After a big bite into a rancid almond once, I have taken to only keeping my nuts in the freezer (the middle schooler deep inside of me giggles at that sentence). The cold keeps the oils in the nuts more stable so that they don't go bad nearly so quickly (especially important for really oily ones like pinenuts). You don't have to be like me and store them in jars (although it looks so pretty) plastic containers or bags work just as well. The important thing is to make sure that whatever vessel you use is air tight to prevent the nuts from acquiring that yucky freezer-y taste.

I live by myself, so having a stocked freezer isn't something to which I am accustomed, but I do know that for large families, keeping track of a well-stocked freezer is a necessity. Otherwise, during that regular freezer clean-out, they'll find fish fillets from 1986.

Lunch in a Box has a neat way of keeping track of things in the freezer -- make magnets out of cutouts of food from the weekly circulars from the market and put them up on the freezer/refigerator door to indicate whether it's something you've got inside. Pretty cool idea!

Gorenje is already one of the leading European appliance manufacturers, but they are aiming to become the most innovative, as well. The company is releasing two lines of Swarovski crystal-encrusted refrigerator/freezers. The first is known as "the Eye-Catcher" and features 7,000 hand-embedded crystals in a high-gloss, black background. Only 10 of this model will be produced. For the slightly less outrageously inclined, the alternative to the Eye-Catcher is Gorenje's commercial line crystal fridge, which only has 3,500 crystals in a black and silver refrigerator/freezer.

Getting past their very unique look, the 2-meter high fridges are controlled with a touch screen mounted on the door, allowing the user to control settings and the appliance temperature very easily. From the same screen, users can access a built-in radio, recipe book and a voice memo recorder/player. Both models will be available exclusively at Harrod's, in England, later this month.

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For Spring Cleaning, we've been talking a lot about the pantry - dried pasta, grains, beans, canned goods - but we can't forget about our freezers. We tend to store a lot of stuff in our freezers to use later, just like we do in the cupboard. Here's a list of a few things that are helpful to keep in the freezer:

• Vegetables - while fresh vegetables are obviously the best, sometimes we want something that isn't in season where we live. Frozen is the next best thing. Canned vegetables, with the exception of plum tomatoes, always taste mushy and bad. The best frozen vegetables, I've found, are peas, broccoli, and spinach. 
• Fruits - for making sauces and baking, frozen fruits work, and are awesome to toss into a smoothie
• Homemade stocks - especially after Thanksgiving, stock made from the roast turkey is awesome to use for soups and stews
• Tofu - it sounds weird, but tofu that has been frozen has a really interesting texture
• Dough - you can keep store-bought pie-crusts, bread doughs, etc., but if you make it yourself, make enough to seal some up for later. 
• Vodka - well, duh. It doesn't freeze, and ice cold out of the freezer, you won't have to dilute it with regular ice.