My frozen archives have got out of control.  For a woman who lives alone, I have a ridiculous amount of stuff in my freezers.  Yes, I have two, and they are both CRAMMED with leftover Silver Screen Suppers fodder and a vast amount of milk products and chillies.  It is time for the annual “defrost and inventory” by my lovely chum Heather.  For some reason I cannot bear to defrost my own versions of the Franz Josef Glacier.  I think it is mostly because of the the guilt I feel about how long the Roland Young Rissoles have been hanging around the place uneaten since many Christmasses long gone.  I am scared about what might happen if I ate those.  What are the health risks?  I need to know Roland, I need to know.

I have a small freezer on top of my fridge – this evening around 8pm it looked like this:

but thanks to Heather after around 15 minutes it looked like this – no kidding.

How did she do it?  Two hairdryers.

Then she decided that she’d have a go at the BIG freezer that Santa Claus brought me last year and is absolutely FULL of nonsense.  She did that too.  She rolled her trousers up for this one and I don’t blame her.  It was a big job.

When all was ice-free we rewarded ourselves with a Hedda Hopper cocktail and a gossip (seemed appropriate).

I can’t really report most of what was said but here’s the bit that made me laugh the most.  Heather has a friend called Mo who is coming to visit from the USA very soon and she said:

H: Mo has had a number one.

Me: Oh my God, she had such LOVELY hair!

H: No, she’s had a number one hit record.

Mo is a songwriter.  Not sure if a number one haircut translates outside of the UK – it’s basically shaving all your locks off.  I am pleased to report that Mo still has her lovely long hair.

So what was in my freezers?  Here’s the inventory of the small one with assorted comments from Heather and myself.  We didn’t stock-check the big one, just zapped it with the hairdryers.

Greta Garbo’s Meatballs

Vincent Price’s Champagne Sauce

Nigel Slater’s Lentils

Vincent Price’s Hamburgers x 3

Helen Twelvetrees’ Sherry Gorgonzola

1 x Richard Dix’s Egg Nog Pie de Luxe

Vincent Price’s Chicken Veloute

Ottolenghi’s Meatballs (very excited to see that these exist!)

Ray Bolger’s Potato Balls

Heather’s comment about the above: “Some of these people should come and pick up some of their stuff”.

Heather announced what she found as she put each thing back in the freezer. I am listing this here more so that I can think about USING THEM UP than for any other reason, not sure why any of you would be bothered, unless you fancy coming round and helping me eat some of it.

A lot of carrots.  An unidentified thing wrapped in foil that might be bacon.  An unidentified thing wrapped in foil that might be sausages.  Some courgette soup.  A solitary slice of bread (she found this very amusing).  Whipping cream, Pitta bread, prawns, cream cheese, lard, another lump of lard, more lard, sour cream “Don’t buy any more cream!” she yelled.  Assorted chillies, Luciana sausage (this is for Rudolph Valentino’s Secret Spaghetti sauce when I get around to it), scotch bonnet peppers, unidentified meat (an expensive bit of steak I think), an extremely old bit of ginger, some pepperonata (Heather: “I think it says ‘Pamela’ written in gold pen.”  Me: “who is Pamela?”  Heather: “I don’t know but she’s been in here since 2009”), some pastry, a venison burger, “a bit of brown stuff and a smaller bit of brown stuff” (more ginger I reckon), and that, I think, is all.

So fresh from my Knoxapocalypse II challenge I hereby challenge myself to eat EVERYTHING that is in that freezer this month.  To make way for a similarly ridiculous combination of stuff for next year’s annual defrost and inventory.  I actually dread to think what is in the OTHER freezer but my goal is to eat my way through this one before making anything else that requires freezing or depleting the major frozen archives stock.  Can I do it?  I seriously doubt it.

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