 So why is it that when I open the freezer door, I can't find
anything to eat? This has happened before. I found that life became
much easier after I trained my eyes to focus only on those things I
was specifically looking for and ignore any anomalies that might
happen in a family of seven.Well, when you have a full freezer
but there is nothing to eat, it is because your freezer is full of
anomalies.
It took some effort, but when my eyes readjusted to "real life"
mode, I could see the little rascals -- and there were a lot of
them. Time to exterminate my freezer.
The first anomaly I saw was a glass bowl with a lump of uneaten
cookie dough ice cream. It wasn't covered. It was just sitting in
there as if someone was in the middle of eating a forbidden snack
and someone else arrived home too early. I suspect my husband as the
culprit.
The bowl of ice cream was balancing on top of a short stack of
pancakes on a plate half-covered with Saran Wrap. The Saran Wrap
stuck to the bottom of the ice cream bowl, which was probably the
reason the pancakes were only half-covered and also why those
pancakes would never be edible again.
I found three opened packages of Polska kielbasa. Each package
had just enough left to make one meal for one tiny person. I make
only one recipe that involves Polska kielbasa, and I make that only
once every three months because only three out of seven in my family
like it. This means that one of those packages is over 9 months old!
The meat packagers are partly to blame for this heinous waste of
sausage. Nobody uses that much Polska kielbasa.
A box of fried chicken apparently spilled in the bottom bin. The
weird thing was that only drumsticks were lying there, haphazardly
interspersed with random popsicles. Why only drumsticks? And where
is the box?
Again, it's a mystery. If my freezer could talk, the stories it
would tell!
[to top of second column]
 |
 I have an icemaker in my freezer, so it was strange to see an
old-fashioned ice cube tray buried by a stack of TV dinners. The
tray contained blue ice. The tray wasn't blue, it was pink. But the
cubes were blue.
OK, I had to know about this one. I asked my son, who seems to be
in the know about most anomalies in my house. He said the blue cubes
were used as an experiment to find out what happened to cold water
(blue ice) when it was added to boiling water. He was saving the
rest for an armada of iceboats come summertime.
There was another plate (I've been wondering where all my
dinnerware got off to!) that had an unidentifiable greenish-yellow
substance on it that would almost certainly be slimy once it thawed.
I decided not to touch it until I knew what it was.
Again, I quizzed my son. He knew exactly what it was.
It was chopped lettuce that he had been feeding to some captured
tadpoles. He hoped to watch them turn into frogs, but we went on
vacation and they all died. I assume it was from the lack of frozen
lettuce.
The vial labeled "mentholated spirits" in one of the freezer door
bins also gave me pause. There must be a reason it is kept in the
freezer. Is it the type of thing that will explode at room
temperature?
My son explained that it is simply denatured alcohol… which only
called forth more questions. It's apparently going to be used for
extracting tomato DNA… OK, too many questions. My brain has a cramp.
I don't want to curb my son's inquisitive nature. Many scientific
breakthroughs have come about by accident. However, one can only
imagine what would happen if the blue ice, the greenish-yellow
frozen slime, the cookie dough ice cream and the vial of mentholated
spirits were to somehow get mixed together in my freezer. It would
either prove to be a cure for cancer or create a mushroom cloud the
size of Phoenix.
[By LAURA SNYDER]
Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist,
author and speaker. You can reach her at
lsnyder@lauraonlife.com
or visit www.lauraonlife.com
for more info. |
