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I have a constant and ongoing battle with my freezer. I used at one point to have three freezers – the one in our USAnian fridge, a 3/4 height one out in the shed, and an under-counter sized one that lived under the stairs, and was entirely filled with minced oxcheek, which we bought in bulk and fed to the cats.

The oxcheek supply fell through, and we gave that (elderly) freezer to some friends. Then in the spring of 2009, we sold the 3/4 one and replaced it with a new under counter under the stairs, partly because our supplier of wonderful Dexter beef was no longer farming cattle, and so we weren’t buying half a cow at a time. Then we moved here, and had no room for anything but the USAnian beast, which in truth is plenty, but I still cannot get out of the mindset of being a three freezer owner, and thus am constantly struggling to fit things into its thankfully Tardis-like interior.

Anyway, I ramble. But we need to actually, you know, *eat* some stuff from the freezer, rather than trying to stuff still more in, so I am on a mission to clear some space. With this in mind, I rummage in its bottom drawers (ooh er), hurling aside the beef mince, the lamb mince, the pork mince (who put that there?), the chicken breasts, seeking the pork steaks, and after all that effort, I got one just one.

Just one because we don’t eat a lot of meat these days, and one is plenty for two of us. When it had thawed, I cut it into cubes, browned them in some olive oil, fought Lilith for possession of the cling film, transferred them to a bowl on a temporary basis, and put the bowl in the grill (then watched Iggy doing his damnedest to open the door of said grill). Then I chopped the white part of two leeks (the green went into the soup pot) and a couple of cloves of garlic, added some butter to the pan, and softened them down, adding some chopped fresh sage leaves.

Then in went a heaped teaspoon of grain mustard (I’m very much in love with this as an ingredient right now),  a dessertspoon of flour, and stirrred it round, then added a good slosh of cider, the pork, and the contents of a carton of haricot beans. Seasoned to taste.

Cooked it for about 25 minutes with a lid on, then removed the lid for the last five minutes or so and turned it up to reduce the sauce. Ate with sautéd potatoes and some brussels sprouts.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

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lunch 2/9/10
We usually have crackers or bread for lunch, with cheese/cold meat/whatever, with the addition of soup in the colder weather. But occasionally, it’s nice to have something different.

As I said, last night’s red cabbage turned out to be lentils when we got the lid off – why do gremlins get into my freezer and relabel things? So I rummaged about and found a tub of aubergine and potato curry.

We tend to freeze Indian style food in small boxes, so we can have two different dishes with a meal – it just works better – so there’s generally a few different things in the freezer, and the aubergine and potato was what came out first.

Zapped the two tubs in the microwave, toasted a couple of wholemeal pitta breads. Delicious, and now the house smells like a takeaway :) And I’m off to find a bit of fruit for pudding – apple or pear?

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

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At one point, we had *three* freezers – the one in the big Amana USAnian behemoth in the kitchen, a tall one out in the shed, and a small one under the stairs which was used exclusively for frozen ox cheek, which we used to buy in huge bulk to feed the cats.

Then the ox cheek stopped being available, so we gave that freezer away. We were in the habit of buying half a cow at a time from a friend of ours who farmed Dexter cattle, so the one in the shed was jolly handy for that, and other stuff, and of course for me freezers are a bit like handbags, in that if there is freezer space I will buy stuff to fill it.  But then we decided that the space in the shed was more important than a big freezer, so earlier this year we ran down the contents a bit, bought a smaller freezer and decanted the stuff into that, and Freecycled the big freezer.  And racked out the shed, which came in dead useful for gardening stuff, and winemaking stuff, and all sorts of other stuff.

And now we’re moving to a differently dimensioned house and we can’t see anywhere to put the small freezer, so we have eaten our way through masses of food (which we’d need to do anyway, because we can’t successfully move a full freezer 250 miles) and yesterday I managed to decant the contents of the small freezer into the Amana.  So now it’s defrosted and ready for sale.

Casualties for immediate cooking were:

  • 1 bag blackberries from the garden – these went into a crumble, accompanied by six dessert apples which were a bit wrinkly; I put some hazelnuts into the topping, which worked rather well
  • 2 packs sausagemeat and 1 lb mince, which I shall make into a brace of meat loaves today
  • 1 x kidney and 1 x heart from the half a lamb we bought ages ago – these will be boiled up for the cats
  • 1 pack lamb and rosemary sausages, which were transformed into a toad in the hole for last night’s supper; we ate it with lashings of onion gravy
  • 3 packs assorted bones, which are in the slow cooker making stock for soup

In other news, the dishwasher packed up a couple of weeks ago. Pete thought he could fix it, but it’s a bugger to get apart, and we have no proper manual for it.  Now we’ve been managing without, I think we’ll continue to manage without – it’ll save a lot of hassle with plumbing in and so forth in the new house, so I shall attempt to sell it as is.

Anyone want an under counter freezer, only a few months old?  Or a broken slimline Siemens dishwasher?

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

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