Ode to my Deep Freeze

Well, maybe not an ode, exactly. Poetry is not my strong suit, especially if it is supposed to rhyme. But I must say I do very much like the deep freeze we purchased a few weeks ago. It is a medium sized one (12.8 sq ft) with an energy star rating. I wanted to get one that would be big enough to store a decent amount of summer produce but small enough that I could keep it pretty full for energy efficiency's sake.

So far it is still kind of empty, but I plan on making some headway with that over the coming weekend. Already I was able to make a huge batch of onion, potato, leek, and garlic scape cream soup which used up a bunch of my CSA produce. Normally I can only make a small batch of anything at a time, but now I have two family size and four single size servings of this tasty soup in my freezer ready to go! I have plans to make some of my favorite biscuits to have on hand, as well as using up a bunch more of my CSA potatoes to make frozen hashbrown patties. I'll also be picking saskatoons and wild raspberries like crazy before they shrivel up on their respective bushes in the hot hot heat expected here this weekend.

I see the freezer as part of a transition towards a lower energy future. The freezer itself takes electricity to run, but I think it will translate into fewer trips to the grocery store, a bit less stove/oven use and less food waste. It will also free up some time, both daily and in the big picture, to give me a chance to practice cooking and storing things on a different scale while I learn lower energy food storage methods like canning, dehydrating and fermentation. And if/when one day electricity is just too costly or precious to use to run my little deep freeze, I can always dig a hole in the yard, plop the freezer in there and use it as a makeshift root cellar.

I am a lot less intimidated by the coming harvest now that I have my freezer!