Like all good suburban housing developments, the HOA-funded cul-de-sacs of the neighborhood I grew up in hid a couple of darkish city legends. One concerned a street-wide love triangle that resulted in a pair’s monetary spoil; one other forged doubt on the “unintended” poisoning of a pair of relentlessly barky dachshunds. However the rumor that haunted me essentially the most was concerning the little woman on the nook who, they are saying, locked her kitten in her household’s standalone storage freezer.
The disturbing considered this frozen cat-sicle was exacerbated by the truth that, as a teen, I used to be often requested to babysit this very youngster. One night time, after I was certain she was asleep, I went searching for some snacks within the storage and flicked on the sunshine to disclose that, certainly, a big, 5-by-3-foot freezer was plugged in proper between the software bench and a stack of paper towels. It had white sides and a lid with metallic hinged locks and was undoubtedly massive sufficient to cover a babysitter’s physique in, whereas nonetheless leaving loads of room for a kitten. Was it the identical freezer? Certainly they’d have bought a brand new one after the entire cat factor, proper? I walked over, flipped again the locks with a clack, and peered inside. Popsicles, a number of racks of ribs, and a thick black rubbish bag tightly wrapped round…one thing. In all probability some steaks. In all probability. I slammed the lid and ran inside.
As you may guess, I’ve spent most of my life a bit of cautious of freezers. I’ve written earlier than about how my mother wielded her side-by-side freezer like a weapon, holding onto small foil-wrapped morsels of meals for questionable lengths of time earlier than periodically unwrapping every one with shock and serving it to the household. And there was the working joke involving my grandmother who, for many years, supplied us what was very doubtless the identical frozen tray of shrimp cocktail every time we visited. Freezers lengthy appeared to me, at worst, like a meals preservation danger, and at greatest, a sort of culinary limbo the place meals lived for a couple of months earlier than being in the end tossed.
However I grew up. I moved right into a small home, then — after I had youngsters — a barely bigger one in a vaguely tract-home wanting subdivision from the Nineteen Sixties full with a indifferent storage. The pandemic occurred, which had me embracing my freezer in new methods, whereas on the identical time my kids received larger, and thus hungrier, and meals costs swelled to the purpose the place my $150 weekly finances barely made a dent. And so it got here to be that I now stare on the less-junky nook of my storage and surprise what it’d seem like with my very own sofa-sized, flip-top chest freezer tucked into it.
I’ve come to understand that the standalone chest freezer is a lot extra than simply an alleged pet coffin, or a doomsday prepper toy, or the place the place the Texas facet of my household shops their annual looking yield (might they curiosity you in, say, 40 kilos of venison sausage?). The Massive Freezer has, in truth, grow to be a sure sort of standing image, a gleaming idol of maturity that in some way concurrently showcases each wealth and thrift.
I do, after all, have a freezer: a normal side-by-side quantity that’s connected to my fridge. However its slim width is limiting. With the ice dispenser included, I principally have room for some frozen greens, ice cream, hen nuggets, popsicles, waffles, a lone gallon bag of hen inventory, some bagels, and possibly a package deal of floor beef. The remaining is stuffed with chilly packs (for child boo-boos) and extra chilly packs (for child lunches). Sheet pan? Overlook about it.
However a chest freezer is larger, and so, so a lot better. Not only a frosty appendage to a different equipment, it’s a devoted preservation software, deep and vast sufficient to permit for essentially the most superfluous of freezing. With a faithful sofa-sized freezer in my possession, I may replenish on luggage of fancy pellet ice, complete frozen pizzas, and retailer quart upon quart of inventory. I may make my very own popsicles, meal-prep lunches and dinners, and disinfect a heap of fluffy stuffed animals without delay.
My associate was lately identified with Sort 1 diabetes, and our weight loss plan shifted dramatically towards decrease carb, increased protein meals consequently. With a freezer, I may subscribe to a type of attractive, fancy, mail-order fish and meat corporations, or possibly even check my luck at a meat raffle. On the opposite finish of the sustainability spectrum, I may have the house to freeze all my compost and save my kitchen scraps for inventory. As I grow old, I too really feel the emotional tug of leftovers-hoarding, longing to carry onto these previous few bites of quiche or meatloaf for a wet day. I yearn to, like my grandmother, stash some shrimp within the freezer for the promise of firm — even when I by no means, ever serve them.
Or it is likely to be that, much more than I need to own a chest freezer, I need to be the sort of particular person who buys such a factor. Right now’s large-freezer proprietor exemplifies an aspirational stage of pragmatism that we must always all attempt to attain. They perceive the finances financial savings of shopping for in bulk and the way the mixed energy of chilly and time could make one season’s bounty final eternally. A freezer proprietor has a Costco membership. They’ve a type of automobile cup holder thingies that organizes all their junk, and a bit of hook of their sink to maintain their sponge from getting icky. They maximize their annual 401K contributions, put on SPF 70 each day, and substitute their HVAC’s air filters each six months on the dot. Their socks match they usually take each day nutritional vitamins. Briefly, a Massive Freezer proprietor has their shit collectively — a state that I, like so many elder millennials, discover persistently elusive in a society that has did not ship on what it promised the generations that got here earlier than.
So what’s stopping me from shopping for my dream freezer? Lack of house, principally, and extra urgent purchases, plus very actual concern of truly turning into my mom. And anyway, we simply received a cat.
Subin Yang is an illustrator at present based mostly in New York Metropolis.
