If you had a deep freeze at home, did you keep it in the garage?
They were so huge, most people had no choice but to. We did.
I was reminded of this last night watching a programme (coming soon) called Electric Dreams. A family have their house modified to be as it would have been in 1970, and must live with all the gadgets and gizmos that decade brought. So they start in 1970 and end up at 1979, then the next episode it's 1980, etc. You get it.
So there they were: gas fire, tiny fridge, tiny cooker, pressure cooker, black and white telly, static phone, but each day they'd take delivery of something that was new around that time. So they started off with a teasmaid, the popularity of which I didn't realise was because only 25% of households had central heating back then, it meant you didn't have to get out of bed and get cold. Who knew? And then came things like colour telly, a stereo radiogram, calculators, blah, blah, blah, all of which had to be reconditioned by a team of experts because they'd all long fallen out of useage.
But the memories came flooding back with the chest freezer, which arrived in 1975 - and they covered the top in wood effect sticky-backed plastic! Ours was like that. Full of Supermousses and crinkle-cut chips, frozen pizzas and tubs of horrid coffee ice cream from Safeway. But how soon it died out. And why was it bigger than the fridge. All fridges were tiny; even the tall ones were slender. Imagine a family of four living out of that today - it's unthinkable. Anyway, it really took me back. Our freezer was always packed to rafters, which meant if you dug really deep (without falling in), you might find a stray Icepop at the bottom, under piles of snow and loose peas.
We barely even look at our freezer compartment and we never go down the frozen foods aisle at the supermarket. It's all meant to be good for you, but I'm always unsure how long stuff is meant to last.
If we had a deep freeze, that wouldn't be an issue. We could keep a whole pig for a year.
8 comments:
Oh for a deep freeze. Just moved house and new place has a fridge with one token draw inside for frozen things.
A two-freezer household here, couldn't be without them! And yes, one is in the garage...
We have no garage so our second freezer is in the shed. It is mainly full of spare portions of soup, chilli etc that MrsB has made and we've not fancied at the time. And an emergency supply of potato waffles for days when we can't face peeling a proper spud.
When I were a lad we had a "utility room" converted from the original downstairs loo and a coal shed and a huge deep freeze in there. Mum used to order by post from Smithfield directly and twice a year a lorry would turn up with big slabs of meat all in colour coded plastic wrapping.
But you have lots of dogs, Matt, so it's probably for all that meat, right?
See that's the idea, Simon, but i have no garage, no shed and certainly no utitlity room, and no room for such a big thing.
We had a huge one in the garage (it was probably just normal size, but to a child it seemed like an aeroplane). Full of ice pops, Arctic Rolls, Birds Eye Rice and Veg, prawns, strawberry cheescake...I could go on and on. Our quite eccentric neighbour still has one and put her dead cat in it till she was able to bury it. Needless to say, have never accepted any offerings from her freezer.
My mum still has a chest freezer in her utility room, albeit a smaller version than the one we had when I was growing up. That finally gave up the ghost a couple of years ago after 30 years’ sterling service.
The new one was the biggest Mum could find (about the size of a typical under-the-counter fridge, but with a lift-up lid), but she soon realised that wasn't big enough for her needs, so she bought another freezer, this time a stand-up version with about six drawers.
Both of these are always full. If a national crisis comes and the shops run out of food, I reckon Mum could survive comfortably for a couple of months (as long as the electricity doesn’t get cut off, of course).
No F-C, there is no pet food in our freezer. We have a tendency to stock up on stuff as I have a serious aversion to supermarket shopping...
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