Rick's b.log - 2024/11/13
It is the 19th of November 2024 You are 3.141.201.29, pleased to meet you!

Frozen stuff

The joy of me being me is I'll be like LIGHT BULB! I bought myself chicken nuggets, that'll be good for dinner tonight. (beat) Oh, bugger. I got those on Friday. It's Wednesday. My cold compartment is only viable for three days because, well, it's cold enough to keep icing up and that's about it.

In anticipation I made some labels with the help of some AI art. Printed them out, from RISC OS via IPP. Cut them out, put them into a lamination pouch, plastified them, cut them out larger (to fit into the dodah) and, well...

Freezer labels.

So, anyway, I was walking around the supermarket. If I had functioning emotions, I'd have been excited. This is like a whole new thing for me.

Quickest forty-odd euros I've spent in that place, I think. (yikes!)

The freezer has four sections. The top isn't a pull-out tray, it's an opening flap like the one on the cold box of the fridge. I'm not sure what that's about, but I guess it's a useful place to put large flat things like pizzas. I like deep pan (chewy dough) and am very particular about what goes on top. No tomato peel, no bell pepper of any colour, no cheese that isn't cheddar/mozarella/something of that ilk (blue cheese, disgusting; goat's cheese, worse). No fatty pig pieces. I am, surprisingly, completely ambivalent about pineapple. I think it's a damned weird thing to put on a pizza, but then I heard on the radio that a British company is making a Christmas (turkey, stuffing, etc) pizza so maybe there's just a line of weird things that don't belong on pizza being put on pizza?
My supermarket has... plenty of those awful French things that bake up to resemble a large cream cracker with that orange gloop that's supposed to be a tomato sauce and "four cheeses" (one being gorgonzola) and/or dessicated pig pieces. In other words, somebody in Brittany created a pizza based upon a description of a pizza badly translated from the original Italian into French and then Breton...right?

The top section is empty. You probably guessed that.

The next section down is a pull-out basket. It is for "dead animal pieces". That being nuggets, burgers, and such. Actually, I don't have nuggets. I forgot. But I do have fish. And organic burgers. Expensive, but shouldn't be stuffed full of antibiotics.

The meat section.

The third section, also a pull-out basket, is for the veggies. Potato pur&eactute;e (like frozen mash), a family sized bag of thin chips, organic brocolli, and organic garden peas.

The veg section.

The final, bottom, section is a smaller pull-out basket. Smaller because it's only half-depth due to the compressor being down there, on the other side. This section is for the odds and ends. I mean, where else would you put chili cheese balls and onion rings?

The odds and ends section.

The little white thing is the temperature sensor. It's -19.3°C down at the bottom.

So what did I do with my new-found culinary freedom?

Last night's dinner.

Two burgers (fried), chips (air fryer), and five chili cheese nuggets (thrown in with the chips). And the best bit? If I don't feel like a burger until the weekend, then that's just fine. It'll be okay in the freezer. This is... like a kind of revolution for me.

And, finally, here's what I have just made myself for tonight. Macaroni cheese with brocolli.

Tonight's dinner.

Your comments:

David Pilling, 14th November 2024, 16:54

In my experience the top section with a flap, sometimes two of them, on an upright freezer is the freezing compartment where you put new items. Likely to have more or most freezing pipes.  I typically put new things in the freezing compartment and leave it at that - I don't use the run flat out button.  At which point someone can say I'm doing it all wrong.

Rick, 14th November 2024, 17:44

Yes, I saw all the pipes and figured it was probably the "make this stuff frozen" bit.  I don't plan to use the thermostat bypass button either, it's not like I'm going to attempt to freeze an entire leg of lamb or anything...    As for doing it wrong, I read on a website that meat should always go in the bottom drawer so if anything drips it won't ruin food that is below it.  Arguably if blood is dripping out of meat in a *freezer*, chances are it's all ruined wherever the meat was put.  I put the meat where I did because it's just a little above my eye level where the freezer is right now, and so less easy to access. I figured I'd probably be eating veg and chips more often, so more accessibility needed...

David Pilling, 14th November 2024, 18:56

Raises the question what stuff is it useful to freeze (ie not frozen to start with). Bread. Fish and meat. Cakes, pastries. Your excess crop from the garden - although that starts to be work, because it has to be cooked to some extent.    When freezers first came out, the craze was to freeze everything - perhaps days when supermarkets didn't sell items all year round.     There are always bags of stuff umpteen years old at the bottom of the freezer. Which are the things it is not worth freezing.    Then there are things that don't freeze well and turn to mush.    Everything is going to be wrapped in plastic, drips don't matter, can't occur.

A tree-dwelling mammal, 15th November 2024, 19:35

Rick - I can't believe you lasted this long without a freezer. It was one of the first things I bought when I got my own place all those years ago. A Samsung side-by-side fridge-freezer with water cooler and ice maker, which is awesome. Means I've always got ice for drinks.    The only downside of one of these is that the ice maker takes up where the top two shelves would be. However, problem solved, I was given an under-counter 3-drawer upright freezer which now lives out in the laundry room. All bulk-buy stuff (frozen chips etc) goes in there. Other things (like ice cream) go in the big freezer in the kitchen.

A tree-dwelling mammal, 15th November 2024, 19:39

(Hit the Send button too early again dammit!)    Re pineapple on pizza: Anyone who actively likes pineapple on pizza is either a sociopath, a serial killer, or on the autistic spectrum. ;-)    As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that should go on a pizza is the tomato sauce, lots of cheese, and some sliced up dead animals. Mostly pigs. Pizza Hut do a spicy beef topping, but generally ham, salami, pepperoni, and other pig-based products. (I tried bacon on pizza once. It was interesting. Nice flavour, but I'd rather have bacon in a sandwich than on a pizza.)

Rick, 15th November 2024, 21:49

I guess "freezer" just wasn't in mom's mindset, so we simply didn't have one.    We did have a combined fridge freezer thingy back in the UK, usefully with the fridge part on top, the other way would be annoying, but I don't recall mom using it other than a place to store those weird oven meals that I liked (the ones in the metal tray that was like an all day breakfast that just goes into the oven for a while).    Sorry, but the best I can say about pig bits is that I *tolerate* them. But out of free choice I don't do pig, I think it tastes bad and the texture is quite unpleasant. So you keep your 🐖 and I'll sit there until the pizza goes cold contemplating whether or not 🍍 was some sort of practical joke that went horribly wrong.  I mean, it's not as if people put mandarine sections or grapes on pizza, so why pineapple?

A tree-dwelling mammal, 18th November 2024, 12:29

Are seriously telling me that you don't like bacon?    So what toppings do you have on pizza? Or do you just like it plain margarita (I think that's how you spell it)?

Rick, 18th November 2024, 14:27

Remember for me, texture is sometimes more important than taste, although pork fails on both (and gammon is just horrid.  Plain pizza is my preference. There's less to go wrong, and I don't want to have to grab my chopsticks to remove the tomato skins, bell pepper, olives...

A tree-dwelling mammal, 18th November 2024, 17:26

I'm not a huge fan of gammon. It's like bacon with delusions of grandeur.    I'd rather just have bacon. And more bacon.    (There's actually Facebook group called "Bacon - The reason you're not a vegetarian".)