the garage freezer

I'm a committed vegetarian and Robin is an omnivore, so we rarely eat the same dish for dinner. So we each get some variety during the week, I'll spend a Saturday cooking several meals and I freeze them individual portions. Knowing we would have an easier time transitioning into parenthood if we had a good stockpile of individual ready-to-heat meals and knowing that I was planning to pump and freeze breast milk and prepare and freeze Harper's baby food in advance, Robin and I decided a garage freezer was going to be a necessity.

This summer in an attempt at frugality, we bought a used one at a garage sale. As soon as we got it home, we realized the guy who sold it to us hadn't been completely honest about the condition. Instead of hassling with taking it back, we cleaned it up, plugged it in, crossed our fingers and started stocking it.

Grammylou and Summer are both excellent cooks and also helped us stock it with tasty, tasty dishes. In fact, they slaved over the stove while we were in labor and recovering at the hospital. It was great to come home to preservative-free, delicious meals that we just had to pop in the oven or microwave.

In March, I walked out to our second-hand freezer stocked full of food and breast milk to find that it had reached the end of its life and everything in it, including 70-ounces (that's a little more than half a gallon) of breast milk had defrosted. If you know our history with freezers and refrigerators, you can imagine the panic that ensued. (We've lost ALL of our perishable food twice in the past two years.) Since the food was still cold, we decided it was okay to refreeze, and we crammed it into the kitchen freezer. However, breast milk must be used within 24 hours of being defrosted and should not be refrozen, so our lactation consultant advised us to throw it all out. If you've pumped, you understand my pain.

We had really grown to depend on our second-hand garage freezer, so we took Harper on her first trip to Lowes to pick out a shiny, new garage freezer. We are slowly re-stocking it with nourishment for both us and for Harper. We joined the bulk-purchase masses with a Costco membership and Robin now has more steak than he can eat in a month. I am diligently attempting to rebuild Harper's milk reserve, though it it's a much slower process now that she is eating more during her feedings. Now if only Grammylou and Summer would come back to cook for us...

Harper and her new freezer