Letting go (in a freezer)

I would have you know I did not overstock my pantry with dried beans, and am not hoarding loo roll. But the news that people working in America’s meat processing plants were falling sick with coronavirus, and that their bosses were finally closing the plants so sick people could stay home and well people could avoid getting infected, struck a chord. I usually stick to the budget-friendly poultry aisles, but every now and then, I like to enjoy what Timothy and I used to call a dinner of

steak and chips and peas.

It was a standard, suppertime, pub-grub menu item in our happy days tootling about Britain’s country lanes. (Midday was for ploughman’s lunch.)

I began to think I might want to stock up on some beefsteaks, and possibly salt away some pork chops, too. I don’t mean literally salt them to preserve them: I mean put a couple in the freezer.

Another thing you should know is that I’m not very organized when it comes to the freezer part of my fridge-freezer. It is French-door model with a smallish freezer drawer, which was easy for Tim to rootle around in from his wheelchair. One entire bin was given over to the flexible ice-packs he used to soothe his wrists. Then there’s the ice-cube bin, and beside it a basket for frozen veggies. The remaining bin seemed permanently silted up with — who knew what: mastodon steaks? pterodactyl wings? — with a pie-shell precariously perched on top of the whole lot.

Shopping, slicing and stashing, with tossing in the middle

I was right to go shopping when I did. My local grocery had taken note of imminent shortages, posting notices that they were limiting customers to two packages each of beef and pork. London broil was priced like sirloin, sirloin like filet mignon, and filet mignon like hand-massaged Kobe beef personally flown in from Japan by the ambassador’s secretary.

I returned home victorious with two packages of tri-tip and two of pork loin chops. Once disinfected from my bi-weekly brush with grocery-store humanity, I returned to the kitchen ready to do battle.

Usually I sling packages into the fridge and hope for the best. But this much food was going to go bad if left to its own devices. I donned a pinny, grabbed a knife, and neatly trimmed the meat into meal-sized portions, wrapping each neatly in cling film. Most uncharacteristically for me, I even labelled what the packages contained and date purchased.

And then realized I had to clear out the freezer to actually, you know, preserve them. (See note above about salt.) Oh dear. I could hear the pterodactyls sharpening their beaks…

It turned out to be, on the one hand, a breeze. The ice-packs were an easy win: toss the grubby ones, move those suitable for a picnic cooler someday to that cooler to await refreezing. The mastodons were all frost-bitten and went in the trash without a backward glance. Ditto the pie shell that expired in 2017.

This was top of that anniversary cake, set aside to enjoy when we were back in our own house, cosy and cooing beside the Christmas tree that was always the backdrop to our anniversary. All I can think is that life got busy in those years after… I have to admit another indictment of my poor freezer upkeep… the year 2010.

It is a measure of my progress past Timothy’s passing that I wiped my eyes and took these photos of the dismal, frosty, frosted cake. Then I tenderly reassembled all its wrappings and put it into the dustbin, not the freezer bin. And took out the trash without further tears.