In The Freezer - What's For Tea?

Travelling home from a few weeks touring southern Scotland in our caravan, our conversation turned to “What’s for tea?” We had been eating out more than usual and the meals I’d put together on board were perfectly adequate though simple, using the microwave, toaster or George Foreman mini grill, and lots of salad. As yet, the pristine gas cooker is untouched by me, due to being timid of gas bottles. The answer to our question was “Something in the freezer,” as it often is.

We have a massive larder freezer and you’d be hard pressed to find a gap amongst the contents. It matches the massive larder fridge, which by comparison, is almost empty in our absence. We used to house a family of four or more. Just two of us now, but feed any number of grandchildren a couple of times a week, depending on after-school activities and us being helpful. There is always something to eat in the freezer or the tins cupboard.

I think we take it all for granted because we’ve got used to relying on being able to store food the way we do. Not too long ago it was different. When I was a child, one of our pubs had a few bedrooms for residential guests and provided meals. I was fascinated by the chest freezer in the cellar, and the ice cream inside it. I’m sure there was plenty of food as well, but having ice cream at home was a novelty. As a young adult, my flat was a cosy little home but without a fridge, never mind a freezer. I managed. I stood my bottle of milk in a bowl with cold water to keep it fresh and hoped for the best. I got a cool box and that was good for butter as well. I had tins and packet foods and bought fresh food as I wanted it, usually picking up something for tea on my way home from work. I didn’t have a handy shop nearby back then. I have two or three now within walking distance – and a stuffed freezer.

I try to keep some sort of order in my stuffed freezer. Homemade items are labelled and dated, there’s a drawer for vegetables and another for potato based food. Fish, meat, pies, pizzas and a supply of Bernard Matthews unicorns, dinosaurs and similar goodies all have their place and a generous amount of ice lollies so we are always ready for visiting children. With all this organisation, I can’t understand how the entire contents are always untidy and often lost, to be found in another drawer.

My poem,

In The Freezer

Some of Iceland’s apple strudels,
Opened stir-fry veg with noodles,
Gregg’s sausage rolls to bake yourself
Pushed to the back of the wrong shelf.
Someone’s put all the chicken pies
In the same drawer as oven fries.
Only ‘tatoes in those spaces,
McCain Jackets, Smiley Faces.
Fish in batter, salmon fish cakes,
Our favourite butcher’s gammon steaks.
Tubs of homemade Bolognese sauce,
Curry and chilli, too, of course.
Escaping sprouts and corn and peas
And tasty pastries filled with cheese
Left over from our Christmas fayre,
Like croquettes I forgot to share.
It’s past its best, that corned beef hash
And so is that left-over mash.
The Dinosaurs are good to eat
And Unicorns, the children’s treat.
The kids will love a freezer feast,
Pasta and garlic bread, at least,
A triangle of pizza, too,
Coleslaw and a few dips will do.

PMW 2023

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Sauce - Keep It in the Fridge

 

Most of the door compartments of my tall larder fridge are taken up with sauces. Apparently, everything needs refrigerating when it has been opened and must be used within six weeks or sometimes only four weeks. We often go beyond that, with our general rule of ‘no fur, its fine’ unless it is obviously curdled or changed colour. Mint sauce, full of sugar and vinegar, in a jar with a two year ‘best before’ or ‘use by’ date, would surely not just ‘go off’ if left in the fridge for seven weeks instead of six? If you don’t hear from me for a while, I might have poisoned myself. Joking apart, nothing hangs around for too long, except the seafood sauce that I bought too much of one Christmas. I’d over-estimated the prawn cocktails, again. The name ‘Seafood Sauce', when did that happen? I searched the shelves in our massive, well-stocked Tesco looking for Thousand Island Dressing, in vain, on a rare physical food shop for last minute Christmas stuff.  Seafood Sauce would have to do. Anyway, I’m melon, not prawn cocktail, it is for dinner guests. Someone suggested mixing mayonnaise and tomato ketchup. I haven’t tried it.

Like lots of people, I was brought up in a family which had two sauces, red and brown. My dad loved tomato ketchup and plastered everything with it. He would have swamped his Sunday dinner if he could have got away with it. My mum liked H.P, Brown Sauce, or mustard, but mustard was a powder that needed mixing and that was a lot of faffing for one sausage butty. I was with dad on the ketchup, but only a small amount on the side of my plate and when it was gone, that was it. The glass bottle took ages to pour and my dad would push a knife in to get it going. Those were the days.

I blame Mrs Bridges, the cook from Upstairs, Downstairs, for my desire to make homemade sauces. I’m not a domestic goddess, I’m more for feeding a family or just the two of us these days, by affordable, practical means and I haven’t got a kitchen maid to help either. I love my own cheese sauce, perfect for cauliflower, broccoli or both, but my favourite is seasoned onions and mushrooms in cream with steak or pork. It is from a recipe for Boeuf Stroganoff but seems to work well,

Amongst the fridge door contents is the irreplaceable Heinz Tomato Ketchup, no other will do, and the H.P. Sauce. They were kept in a cupboard when I was a child. I keep Soy sauce and Worcester sauce in a dark cupboard with the vinegar, salt and pepper. I hope they are alright.

Here is Lake District, from Sir John Betjeman,

I pass the cruet and I see the lake
Running with light, beyond the garden pine,
That lake whose waters make me dream her mine.
Up to the top board mounting for my sake,
For me she breathes, for me each soft intake,
For me the plunge, the lake and limbs combine.

I pledge her in non-alcoholic wine
And give the H.P. Sauce another shake.

Sprint of Grasmere, bells of Ambleside,
Sing you and ring you, water bells for me;
You water-colour waterfalls may froth.
Long hiking holidays will yet provide
Long stony lanes and back at six for tea
And Heinz’s ketchup on the tablecloth.

John Betjeman  (1906 – 1984)

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and keep well, Pam x

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