Friday is Lunar New Year, the beginning of the Year of the Horse. I’ve been down with a nasty cold but on Monday was feeling well enough to do a little house work. I’m compelled to because you’re suppose to fulfill your obligations, settle all debts, and tidy things up before one year ends and another starts. It’s a cleansing of sorts that allows you to refresh, renew, and reboot.
I decided to focus on my stand-up freezer, located in our garage. It’s always full, very full. But on Monday, I decided to rummage through it and purge. It wasn’t easy and a bit frightening to realize how much the contents of my freezer reflects who I am.
I learned to freeze things from my mom, who took to American-size refrigerators and dedicated with vigor. She has two fridges and two freezers, keeps things meticulously labeled. She rotates what’s in her freezer in a timely manner.
The situation in my freezer is not quite like that of my mother’s. To be honest, I found some shamefully old things in mine -- food that I thought I should eat and would keep, but I never did. For example, lobster fumé from 2011. I used to save the shells from cooking lobsters because they were so pricey, and made the broth for special event lobster risotto. I thought I was being frugal but not using it killed that ambition.
I cannot remember why I bought a huge bag of coconut (top left) and let it expire in 2010. Seriously. I didn’t know it was in the freezer until I dug way to the back wall. And then there’s the embarrassing clumps of ground yellow mung beans from Tet 2013 – when I made banh chung Tet sticky rice cakes. Since we’re on the brink of a new new year, I owe it to myself to cook a new batch.
Other bad habits included keeping opened bags of pandan leaves in the freezer. (Hello, freezer burn! Duh.) And, why keep banana leaves that look so over the hill? I actually thought I could salvage a few soft inner portion but I didn’t get around to it. Bye bye banana leaves.
The second category of frozen food that I found was food items I bought and never used. They often came from Asian markets. I selected them with the intent of tinkering with them but never did. I’d come home with the groceries, toss the ‘high-value’ items in the freezer where I knew they’d keep well. Then, I just kept them there. For years, it turns out.
Leathery looking sheets of tofu? I was going to make a salad with them to replicate something I ate in Chengdu in 2010. Vaguely named “frozen Chinese spinach” was suppose to be part of a 2009 dumpling filling experiment.
Hard-to-find caul fat was dragged to Northern California from Southern California. It cost me a whole $2.79 -- the gasoline cost more and the price of running the freezer too. I never employed it for grilled meaty morsels.
The freezer contents also got me to relive some of the VWK experiments of the past. The trial and errors of making Vietnamese beef jerky were preserved in two bags of the stuff. The recipes go back to [gasp] 2009 and 2011.
Digging around I also found a Peking duck carcass (saved for stock) and some duck liver that I genuinely thought I’d put into stuffing or pate. Never got around to either of those tasks.
Spring roll wrappers, freezer burned scallops, ancient looking bags of soy milk lees (okara) were part of the twenty or so pounds of trash that I dumped into the garbage. Some items, however, I couldn’t part with. Precious keepers included dried lantern chiles that Karen Shinto and I carried back from Sichuan, bags of natural yellow and purple food dyes that Elizabeth Andoh insisted I buy in Tokyo, dried sa sung worms that Cameron Stauch brought from Hanoi, and rye bread from Langer’s in Los Angeles.
Here’s how the freezer looked post-purging:
“It doesn’t look like much changed,” my husband said. Yeah, I have to agree. I need to go through it again. There’s a tub of rendered chicken fat that probably goes back several years. Oh, and there’s also the freezer in the kitchen to tackle too. I guess I have a little more clean up to do before Tet arrives on Friday.
So, how are you preparing for the New Year?
Related post: Why Vietnamese Tet is for home cooking
brian says
I just moved so I went through the same thing. Very traumatic actually.
I'm curious about the food dyes. What are they for and what are they made from?
Thanks!
dmreed says
I am even more guilty :>(
In addition to my kitchen and pantry freezers, I have many cans and jars of food stuffs of which some have definitely and some have probably expired. Hopefully, your post will inspire me to also do some cleanup!
Michael Malone says
Guilty !! I have three refrigerators with three freezers that are packed to the hilt. Only two of us in the home... Lord have mercy LOL !!! Thanks for the fun read.
Tom says
Equally guilty! And our numbers seemingly continue to grow along with our freezer contents. Wonder if there's a 12 step program? 🙂
Bron says
Cleaned out my freezer today. Have spent the last couple of weeks making my menu plan from stuff I already have ( who knew that would help clear the backlog? ) so managed to get the amount down a bit - until I made stock from the carcasses then made soup for the freezer!
Andrea Nguyen says
Ain't that the truth, Brian. The food dyes are made from vegetable. I guess I should post about them, huh? Like I what am I saving them for???
Diane says
I don't have a garage, so no place to put a stand-up freezer, or I'd be in the same place as you! However, in my regular fridge/freezer there's scary old stuff in freezer. I clean out the fridge completely every 60 months to a year, but the freezer? Nahhhhhhhh…I have done it maybe twice. In 8 years.
You have inspired my to throw away my (very nasty, freezer-burnt) old banana leaves and coconut. Sigh.
Diane says
Ummm…type - that's 6 months to a year on the fridge - not 60! Fridge I'm good at managing. Freezer? Yeah, 60 - that's about right.
andrea says
I have been cleaning and preparing for the new year, too. The banh chung are boiling on my stovetop right now. I did a freezer clean out earlier this week (and earlier this year for my chest freezer which needed to be moved/defrosted). It is hard to get rid of those items we had good intentions for (and put hard work into making), but it does feel better that I can get in and find what I need and use what we have. That said, I didn't get rid of that half a pig head (part of what you get from ordering whole animals) that I really want to make into headcheese. I'm giving myself a deadline of May 1st or it goes!
Best wishes for the new year!
Debra Samuels says
I bought 8 lobsters in Maine this past summer so I have Lobster shells, lobster meat and lobster sauce marinara - all in my freezer! What am I waiting for? I vow to use next week!
I just recently did a similar purge and came across the frozen banana leaves, tiny piece of chicken fat for future chopped liver (didn't happen), cracked dumpling wrappers, etc.
Thanks Andrea!
Annika says
Wow, that's a well-stocked freezer. And it has such treasures in it! :o) Glad I found your blog (while looking for Vietnamese pickles...), as I've loved Vietnamese food ever since a trip to Vietnam a year ago. Will come back to read more!
Andrea Nguyen says
Looks like we're all in the same frozen boat! Who says home cooking is on the way out? Not us.
Andrea Nguyen says
That would be funny, Tom. We could make money from that....
Andrea Nguyen says
Three? Three? That's half a dozen. Goodness, man. You are amazing. And not even Asian....
Andrea Nguyen says
Time to start anew, Diane!
Andrea Nguyen says
I guess it's all about the intention, right? We meant well...
yvonne says
Thank you so much for this post. I had a feeling that I wasn't alone in my freezer shame. But you and your readers have made me feel a little less guilty and a little more motivated.
Unfortunately my power was out for about 3 days just before Christmas, so fate and the weather decided for me that the freezer was getting a purge. Since then I have made an effort not to fill my freezer with odd stuff.
Rune says
Having a big freezer is great, and it allows us to make things in big batches (China Moon Salmon Burgers are a long time favorite), and eat well during the week as well.
We "allways" empty the freezer before going on summer vacation. This sometimes means eating hearty winter food in the middle of summer, but that cab be interesting as well.
Toan says
This is so funny, Andrea. But it also helps me NOT to get a freezer, because I know exactly where I will be if I have one. We just replaced our old top freezer refrigerator with a bottom freezer. It turns out that it doesn't have as much room as the top freezer one. So, I "discovered" things that I had for in there so long ago that is no longer edible. Well, they ended up in a trash can. Don't know how much money I threw away whereas I thought of saving money when I bought stuff on sale for future use, yet forgot about it. Oh well, we can always start fresh, can't we?