The joy of freezing
I love food. I love buying food, cooking food, eating food and I might have the beginning of a hoarding problem regarding food. I love stocking up on food, having all the shelves and cupboards full. The freezer, too.
Not really sure when or why this happened. As a family we’ve absolutely never been without food. The only thing I can remember is the supermarket in Libya, when I was about 3. Empty shelves. Large bags of rice, broken, spilling on the floor.
But that can hardly be considered a trauma. It must have been something else that I can’t remember.
Or I’m just naturally obsessed with food.
Anyway, back to the post. When I cook, I sometimes (on purpose or not) make too much, and then what I like to do is freeze it. Simple. A while back I boiled way too many chickpeas for hummus – I checked on internet and was informed that yes, I could freeze them and then use them again. And so I did, and later was very happy to discover how fast and easy it was to make a nice, warm chickpea soup, boiling some stock and adding the chickpeas at the last minute. Or more hummus.
On New Year’s, as per custom (in Italy), I made lentils. And, as per custom (in my life), I made too many and froze them.
Later, I made stuffed chicken. I like a sausage-whitebean-tomato stuffing. Which I made too much of. So I froze some.
And yesterday I was hungry, but didn’t feel like cooking. What I felt like doing was cuddling the friendliest of our foster rats (yes, we’re currently fostering a trio of pet rats that are looking for a forever home) and research bruxing, which was at that moment much more interesting than cooking (sorry, stomach!). So when (around three pm) I headed to the kitchen (about five steps from the sofa) I opened the freezer and a simple but effective idea formed in my head: legume soup. Or better: lentil and white bean soup with a little addition of pasta and homemade stock. (no chickpeas, I had finished those aaaages ago). Oh! And some diced ham that we had frozen before a trip we went on.
This is the result:
In 9 minutes I had a warm, delicious and healthy meal that would have taken hours to make had I had to cook the ingredients separately. It would have been ready in 5 if I hadn’t added the pasta, but what can I do? I’m a true pastivore.
Together with Nicole Duplaix, Chair of the IUCN-SSC Otter Specialist Group , I wrote a book all about otters and how wonderful they are. Check it out We Love Otters
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