It’d be true to say that our relationship with our next-door-neighbours is frosty to say the least. We fell out with them a couple of years ago after three really nasty incidents that left me with boiling blood and fury. We’ve not spoken since!

Before the frost, though, they leaned over the fence one day and said “can you use a freezer”. They had an old cupboard-style freezer (one with a big opening door on the front) that was about to go to the dump and they wondered if we could use it. They just didn't want the effort of taking it to the dump I suspect. I “snatched their arm off” and it found its way into our house where it has been pressed into good use for freezing the produce from my garden. We have found that most of what I grow can be frozen and not only that but I can even freeze our hens’ eggs when we have a glut. It’s fab.

It has helped me with my food obsession in another way, that was totally unexpected when I first plugged it in. You see I don’t trust pre-processed food and hence don’t buy “convenience” foods but I do have the need for meals that can be prepared quickly when I get home late from work or Uni. So I invested in some freezer-oven-table dishes and now if I make a veggie shepherd’s pie, dragon pie or lasagne, I make two and one goes in the freezer for a difficult day. I also make big batches of soup, freezing what I don’t use immediately and then I can pull out a single portion before going to bed at night so the following morning I can heat it up, stick it in a flask and take it to work. (Oh did I say I also don’t own or use a microwave!) Pizza dough gets made in batches that provide three meals for us and frozen. Dried beans are cooked in my pressure cooker in bulk and frozen in “portion-size” containers that can be tipped, still frozen, into chillis or baked beans or whatever. Left over half-glasses of wine get stuck into containers and frozen so they can be added to gravy or casseroles. Tins of coconut milk get divided into three portions and two of the three get frozen while one gets used. Egg whites get frozen if I’ve made mayonnaise (I did say I don’t trust processed food).

All-in-all this freezer helps me to manage our meals with my increasingly erratic behaviour with regard to shopping. You see, I pick stuff up off the shelf in the supermarket and, as long as I can actually READ the label (i.e. I’ve got my glasses on top of my head), I will only buy it if the ingredients are a. veggie, b. don’t contain palm oil, c. don’t contain anything I couldn’t reasonably be expected to buy as an ingredient (therefore anything with stabilisers, thickeners etc is out and d. nothing GM, e. actually taste better than something I could make myself. The last one is the stumbling block. I don’t know if pre-packed food has got worse quality over the years or if my standards have gone up but it’s really rare for the food you buy ready-made to be “nice” if you see what I mean. I realise this makes me more than a little weird and perhaps a bit bonkers. It certainly is a rod for my own back as my mum would say but it’s me and one thing I do know is that I’m stuck with me because I am me.

So tonight, the contents of this freezer have been run down to a low-ish level so the remains can go into the other freezer. The thing has been switched off, the floor is swaddled in towels and there is a bowl of hot water inside to speed up the process. Here it is!