INVENTORY THE MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICAN FREEZER IN TROUBLED TIMES
The freezer has always been full, we’ve never seen it change. But I know each quadrant, and its stasis is evidence of my mental load, a receptacle of scraps, of bad weather, of this constant rotation of stress.
We still have the dinner rolls my mother insisted on buying for Christmas dinner, but we always forgot to make and never really needed in the first place.
I’ll be honest. I used to be careless and throw away old bread. My best intentions of breadcrumbs were the food processor’s pipedream. But these days, we must find a use for everything.
There is the chili in back left corner. It’s my mother’s recipe: I triple the spice, quadruple the meat, cut the beans in half. So not her recipe exactly so much as a memory, a tall tale of chili, an opening of many cans of our family’s narrative tradition.
There are soups I made from scratch – large batches saved for later are a heavy burden: curried lentil with root vegetables; cumin lentil with tomato tarka; chickpea with leeks and spinach; bone broth; shoyu tare. I never want to eat them. I am never inspired by the cold, hard bricks.
Pulled pork in reusable silicon bags because pork is the most poetic protein source and the most sexual.
Bags of chimichurri cubes, minced ginger, peeled garlic. A single lamb chop from the farmer’s market whose name I once knew but have forgotten.
I’ve learned to balance things carefully, to fill every space. Even when it seems full, I commit impossible feats. My talents continue to go unnoticed, but I will add a line to my resume.
Eventually, we take a tour of cauliflower corner: cauliflower pizza crust, cauliflower rice, cauliflower castles, cauliflower fields forever. What can’t we make from cauliflower? But let’s face it, frozen vegetables are boring unless they say medley.
A few frozen meals, and they call them Power Bowls now because that’s what I need to get through the days. Korean inspired beef and Cuban inspired pork: power and inspiration, together at last.
And each time we make a dent, everything falls apart. The weight of our burden is laid out on the kitchen floor in front of us. Our panic sets in as the stock begins to dwindle, the guilt of our hoarding, the recognition of our privilege, the soft thunk of bagged peas at our feet.
Follow Mary at her crafting Instagram, Harpeth Handmade.