Long live the chest freezer!

Last year we took a leap of faith. We invested in a new appliance: a chest freezer. Didn't know how it would go. Wondered if it would become a frigid black hole of mystery food that dwelled in basement exile. One never knows about these things. Yet, I'm pleased to say, it's worked out great! I LOVE my chest freezer.

It is because of the freezer that we were able to put up several hundred pounds of locally and sustainably grown fruit picked at the peak of ripeness. Consequently, I've eaten some version of said delicious fruit every morning for the past 7 months or so. Sweet, delectable peaches, flavorful red-bursts of raspberries and strawberries, the purple-black depths of black-berries, those darling little antioxidant-rich blueberries... My favorite brekky? A bowlful of this frozen fruit plucked from the depths of my darling chest freezer, a healthy dollop of Nancy's plain yogurt, covered with a generous sprinkling of granola (either bought in bulk or home-made). It's heaven in a cereal bowl! The semi-frozen fruit is like eating sorbet for breakfast!

Now, the sad news is that we are finally running out of fruit. I dived down into the lowest levels of the freezer the other day, and we have one container of strawberries and one container of blackberries. I also have a few jars of canned peaches that I put up in a canning party with friends last summer. So while this is certainly not the end of the world, and I'm happy that we've made it through much of the fall and winter eating this fabulous local fruit, I wish I would have recorded how many pounds we picked last year so we'd know how much to pick this coming summer. My husband is practical on the matter: "Pick as much as we can, it'll get eaten." True, indeed. And maybe next year, I might actually share a little bit more with my kids. Well, hmmm. Let me put that a different way. It's not that I didn't try to share some of it. But if they're just going to push a poor frozen berry around their plate and then claim that the texture is too funny... Well, that's just wasting food! Their loss, right? Let them eat toast!

It's also because of the chest freezer that we were able to shop at the Nature Bake outlet store and easily find room for 12 loaves of bread. And to buy into that sustainably raised cow... The chest freezer rocks!

How about you? Do you love your supplemental freezer?