Plus a brief foray into freezer frenzies.
Joseph Mackereth
Even though I grew up in a real family of eaters, our houses always had miniscule pantries. They were jam-packed with stuff, piled on top of each other, until you had to move five things to get to one. That also meant you’d forget what was in the pantry, so you bought more. When my mother passed away, we found five tiny jars of pimentos in the pantry. The odd thing is, I do not recall her ever using pimentos in any recipe. What were they for?
Every time we went to the grocery store, we got home bumping right up against dinner time so the new stuff was just slammed into the pantry as quickly as possible to get dinner on the table. And every time we did that, Mama would say that we were going to organize it as soon as we finished the meal, but we never did.
I am sorry that my mother passed away before the grocery store rotisserie chicken craze really took off. She would have thought that was a humdinger of an idea. I’m also sure that grocery store rotisserie chicken would have become our main source of protein, since it would have made her life easier. That would have been fine with me, since my Mama’s baked chicken was always desert dry, though you can rest assured it never had a lick of salmonella.
Mama also thought that you were not a functioning adult unless you had a chest freezer somewhere in your house that was completely full. She was a child of the Great Depression, riding it out in a little log cabin with two older brothers and her parents, and if you had a pantry and a freezer full of food, you were rich. Your bedtime prayers did not center around food. You were living large.
My opinion? Freezers are wonderful things until they’re not. I grew up in an area that had power outages every winter, sometimes five days or more. Oh, how my mother fretted then. One year, she had the bright idea to bring snow inside and pack that into the freezer to keep our goodies cold. That worked fine until the power came back on and everything froze together into a giant three-foot by five-foot ice cube.
Can I just tell you that I am a big fan of labeling your freezer contents, because I am. You will not remember five months from now what that tin foil triangle contains. It could be cake, pie, pizza, or an odd-shaped piece of venison. Mama’s insistence that she would remember exactly what it was when it was needed had no data to support that claim, yet you did not dare call her on it.
You see, Mama thought tin foil protected food better than anything else. I am sure that it is a wonderful food wrap and when paired with some labeling tape, would be the best solution ever. When not paired with labels, not so much. You are reduced to guessing by shapes or my mom’s favorite method, feel. Everything in that freezer felt like rocks to me, but she’d hold a shiny package and try to divine whether it was raw hamburger, pound cake, or cooked lasagna. “This feels like it’s meat, doesn’t it feel like meat to you? Now what kind of meat do you think this is? I’m in the mood for beef. I think it’s beef.” Nope. Turkey breast. Most of our family meals were not planned, which created a certain whimsy about dinner. What do the great freezer and pantry gods have for us today?
Just imagine how fun the pantry/freezer hide-and-seek game was during the holidays. Fetch the sugar cookie dough from the freezer. Hearing that was just like being told to “take that hill.” Your chances for success were pretty slim and there may be injury. I unwrapped and rewrapped cylinder after cylinder of frozen food, finding hamburger, ground venison and pork sausage but no cookie dough. When I reported back that I couldn’t find a roll of dough, Mama said, “Of course not silly, I froze it flat so it would thaw quicker and be easier to cut out.”
Back to the basement for something flat. Three pepperoni pizzas later, I found what appeared to be sugar cookie dough. When I delivered it, I was informed that it was plain pizza crust. Of course, Mama went down to the freezer and laid her hands on the dough in two minutes flat, I’m sure by using some sort of supernatural divining touch. The freezer was her friend, it was my black box of food.
For my mother, having a full-to-bursting pantry and freezer meant that you were feeding your family. It meant you would be all right. So when I opened a cabinet the other night and a bottle of maple syrup fell out hitting me on the head, my husband suggested that it was time to organize the pantry. Right after dinner, honey.
A Wish for My Readers
This past year has been difficult. We have lost family along the way. For 2021, I send you my warmest wishes for a full freezer and pantry, the safety of your loved ones, and a better year for all of us. May we all be all right. —Molly
The story above appears in our November / December 2020 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!