Day 4: Ohmygodmyfreezer

Have you ever seen that show Hoarders? It's about people who keep way too many things, often the result of a traumatic experience or mental illness. Last weekend when I opened my freezer in front of my family, I felt like I was the hoarder on an episode of Hoarders.

What, yours doesn't look like this?

I only realized how crazy it had become when I heard myself talking about it.

"Oh c'mon, it's not that bad."

"I keep animal carcasses so I can make stock!"

"I can easily fit four pints of ice cream in here. See, you just wedge one right here, another one right here .."

"I don't know how old that fruit is."

Day 4 was about taking my freezer back. I took an inventory of its contents so that I could see how out of control I had let it become.

• short ribs
• eye of round
• lamb and goat bones
• pheasant carcass and pheasant offal
• peas
• mixed berries
• strawberries (2 large zip lock bags) 
• condensed milk (2 containers)
• nam prik pow
• chickpeas
• powdered, sun-dried shrimp
• whole dried shrimp (did I mention I have a huge jar of dried shrimp in my refrigerator as well?)
• strawberry/kiwi sorbet
• Homer's banana macadamia nut ice cream
• burnt sugar ice cream
• Horlicks ice cream
• chocolate/Guinness ice cream
• fig ice cream
• pheasant stew
• pie crust
• puff pastry
• fish broth
• chiles
• gyoza wrappers
• fish meat balls
• kaffir lime leaves
• gingko nuts (so gross)
• almonds
• jackfruit (2 small packets)
• chestnuts (3 bags)
• banana and sticky rice desserts
• stone ground white corn meal (coarse)
• prosciutto heel
• Chinese pork sausages
• truffle oil laced vegetable pot pie
• Thai red curry
• Coffee (2 bags)
• Ice (two trays)

Surprisingly, I didn't toss that many items, just stuff that was over two years old. Fact: The freezer does not suspend animation so keeping food over even a few months degrades its quality quite a bit. I learned that from Mark Bittman. He wrote my favorite article about freezing foods.


I made stock out of the pheasant carcass and turned it into what my parents would probably call "poor people food."

Khao Tom

Thai rice porridge. Top with: hot peppers soaked in vinegar, vinegar, fried garlic oil, cilantro, green onion, fish sauce and white pepper. I braised the short ribs and eye of round in coffee and red wine and threw in a dried guajillo pepper. Maybe I'll eat that with rigatoni later this week. My freezer is back under control and I hope to keep it that way in the future.

A sane person's freezer

I'm re-reading one of my favorite books right now; it's called Apartment Therapy. It started out as a one-man business, grew into a book, and blossomed into a fantastic blog that I read regularly. The book focuses on an 8-week home cure that turns your apartment into a purposefully designed, highly-functional space. I don't think I'll be doing the cure since it's a big commitment, but I am using the book as a guide for how I should think critically about the space I have and what I can do to improve it. Apartment Therapy encourages you to get rid of unnecessary items and clutter in your home in order to improve its health and my freezer was the easiest place to start.

As a next step, I went through each room in my apartment and listed all the repairs needed, identified a problem with it if possible, my ideal use for it, and notes about the items in it that I may want to (re)consider. I'm excited to start bringing my apartment back to life!