Freezing the Goodness

I return to the real world today, after a brief foray into a mysterious land called Spring Break, which puports to be some sort of 'vacation' or 'holiday' but, at least in my case, looked identical to a normal week, just without the 8 hours of class. You know, I remember spring break in college--the senior year getaway to Paris, the trip with Model UN to Brazil, the other, less pleasant weeks--and this pseudo-vacation just doesn't cut it.

(However, I did apparently take a vacation from blogging. I'll blame that on midterm exam + presentation + week of 'vacation,' if you don't mind.)

One of the main things I did over break, however, was cook. I took a bunch of hours on Friday, and cooked and packaged and froze food to keep me and my household going over the next seven weeks of forced march to the end of my semester and my wedding, which happen to coincide perfectly. (Final exam on Thursday, wedding on Saturday, papers due and leave for honeymoon on Monday.)

Here are the results:

This is my freezer. Obviously I didn't make everything in here, but here's a tour:

Top shelf, left to right: corn and cheese empanadas, vegetable korma with rice and dal, xanthan gum for gluten-free baking, frozen bought cilantro and basil, broccoli I steamed and froze, gluten-free frozen pizza, bag of scraps for stock, ice pack.

Bottom shelf, left to right: peanut butter cup ice cream, millet pilaf with kale and chickpeas, bagels, millet pilaf with lentils, beet stems, and broccoli, mole-from-a-jar over mixed vegetables and rice, black bean soup (in yogurt container), more millet with lentils, beet stems, and broccoli, homemade polenta, big yogurt container full of Moroccan chickpeas with dried fruit, more empanadas (bean and rice), matar tofu with rice and dal, black bean chipotle burgers (gluten-free).


And, for good measure, the freezer door:

Top shelf, left to right: catnip, strawberry chardonnay sorbet, more peanut butter cup ice cream, extra butter, caramel ice cream purchased sometime last calendar year, candy bought in Rehoboth.

Bottom shelf, left to right: chicken hotdogs none of the carnivores in the house like which are therefore languishing in the freezer, frozen mixed vegetables, almond flour, gluten-free, dairy-free chocolate peanut butter fudge rice ice cream, brown rice flour, soy flour.

(Not pictured: the broccoli, polenta, and beets that I put in the fridge to use sooner rather than later, and the black bean soup I moved to the fridge to force me to eat it--it's 2 months old already.)

(To answer the obvious questions: This is about a week's supply of ice cream for the three of us. The catnip is in the freezer because the cats can find it anywhere else.)

This is such a strange task of housewifery, preparing meals in advance and storing them in the freezer. For me, though, it's about survival. Here's the dirty little secret in all of this bounty: I'm going to eat 95% of it. That's right. While the polenta in the fridge and the double batch of pasta I make every other week or so ends up eaten by all of us, this stuff is mainly for me to eat while I'm working, when I get home late and the Wife has other leftovers to eat, or when I'm commuting between babysitting and class. The reasons are many: I don't have time to cook from scratch every time I'm hungry, I don't have the money to buy something to eat every day, and too much takeout and prepared food gets old, gets expensive, and gets unhealthy.

This is self-care you are witnessing, which makes it possible for me to care for those around me. I know it's not that radical to some...but I have some trouble with it, so it's a step.

So now, back into the abyss. I have a post for later this week on schemes of benevolence, the famine relief industry, and the names of citrus fruits in Spanish; and another coming soon on the politics of wedding consumption. So keep your eyes on this space. I promise, I'm off vacation now. Not that I even noticed.