New Toy! New Toy!

Look what arrived at the house yesterday:


A FREEZER! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am extremely excited about this - can you tell?

We have been shopping for a freezer for what seems like forever. Probably almost 2 months in reality. You wouldn't think it would be that hard to decide on one but there's quite a few options to consider. Upright freezer or chest freezer? Then what size of freezer do we need? Is 7 cubic feet big enough? Or should we go with 13 cubic feet? The 13 cubic foot freezer is not that much more expensive than the 7 cubic foot freezer so maybe we should just get the bigger one. But do we really NEED a freezer that big when there's only two of us? Who has the best prices on freezers? Will we be able to take it home ourselves or do we need to have it delivered? How much does delivery cost? Which freezer is going to last at least ten years? Where will we be in ten years? Will we have kids? How many? Okay maybe we do need the 13 cubic foot freezer...

Whew. See? There's lot to think about! We ended up with a Frigidaire chest freezer. It's 8.8 cubic feet with two baskets. It holds 300 and some pounds of food, and we decided that was plenty of space. We opted for a chest freezer over an upright because they are less expensive for the same amount of space, they are more energy efficient and they can keep lower temperatures.

We really needed this freezer because of the garden. We've thought about getting one before for buying in bulk but this year really sealed the deal with the garden. Our freezer in the kitchen has been completely PACKED for several weeks now. Almost everytime the door was opened, something feel out. We have not had ice for awhile either. The ice maker is broken and there was no room for ice cube trays. This is what it looked like:


Here's the inside of the new freezer:


Look at all that space!

The first thing I did when I got home was move a ton of food out of the kitchen freezer into the new deep freeze. It was four or five bags of food. I had no idea how much I had crammed in there! And there was some stuff buried that I had forgotten about including some break and bake cookies (mmmm).

Here's the freezer all full:




I label everything with masking tape and a Sharpie so I remember what it is. Even if it seems completely obvious and I think of course I will know what this is, I still label it. You never know.

There is still a lot of space left in the freezer which is great. I should be able to put up some more tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and okra before the first frost.

I think I'd also like to get some more baskets for the bottom of the freezer just to keep everything more organized. Right now I just threw everything in the bottom.

I also put the core to my new ice cream maker in the freezer! I got this brand new ice cream maker for Christmas last year and I still haven't used it. I have been dying to use it this summer but once the freezer got full there was no way. The core should be kept in the freezer at all times so that you can make ice cream whenever you want. Now it has a home in the new deep freeze. The core should be completely frozen sometime tomorrow and I plan to make watermelon sorbet. Look for a future post on that!

I read something interesting about freezers the other day. Freezers sales are countercyclical. When the economy is down, freezer sales go up because more people are buying in bulk, gardening and eating at home. When the economy is up, people eat out more and cook at home less, therefore they don't need the extra freezer room. It makes complete sense. I just thought that was interesting. Freezer sales are probably very high this year!

I'd like to give a special thanks to my cat Paulie in helping write this blog by laying on top of my arms while I type so that it took twice as long to write as it normally does. No matter how many times I pushed him off he just kept on coming back. I admire your determination Paulie.