My mother, ever a fount of wisdom, has passed on her collected nuggets of common sense over the years. "Never wear 'American Tan' tights" was pretty much a given, as was "Jeans? With your hips?" but "Never put anything into the freezer that you haven't clearly labelled" was just filed under Daft Old Bat with a Memory Like a Sieve and forgotten about.
Until last Saturday, when I thought I would unearth a box of ratatouille I happened to know was lurking in the snowy wasteland that is the icebox.
Having defrosted some Bolognese Sauce, a quart of tomato soup and a box of something unpleasant I don't think I can have had anything to do with, fresh or frozen, I decided to leave well alone and close the freezer door before the stuff at the back became accustomed to the light and made a break for it. Which was a shame, really, because I'd spent the preceding ten minutes quizzing one of our dearest friends as to his stand on things containing courgettes and found him not entirely averse, this quizzing occurring with me prostrate in front of the white goods as usual, the language becoming riper as I dug ever deeper into the Black Run on the second shelf.
So Jon had "No, I don't mind broccoli and snow peas (again)" with his rack of lamb and we spent the rest of the week eating red food.
Not labelling food before it went into the freezer had its roots in reasonably sound common sense, as I recall. Firstly, I was younger in those days and actually could remember what I was squirreling away; secondly, the only labels I could ever find that actually stuck to anything were the tiddly little labels for jamjars, on which my ample handwriting couldn't even manage "Grpft Marmel...", and were therefore completely hopeless for
generously-syllabled dishes such as 'Choucroute a la Mode d'Alsace' and finally, after I'd aged a bit and thought to write the legend on the item in question, do you suppose there was ever an occasion when the freezer marking pen was anywhere other than in the possession of a small, ink-stained youngster hotly denying both its whereabouts, along with the whereabouts of the string, the poultry shears and – on one occasion – the mandoline. ( "What on earth do you mean, you're playing Revolutionary France with your Jonny Quest figure??? What do you suppose they did – sliver people to death????")
Time passes, however and brain cells die at such an alarming rate you can actually see them falling, lemming-like, out of your head and you find yourself looking at unidentifiable lumps of stuff that might be leftover casserole of lamb, or if not that then probably Apricot Crumble.
Useful little cubes of stock are another problem, I find, unless clearly marked – which obviously they aren't in my house, otherwise I wouldn't find myself deftly removing rectangles of court bouillon from the gins and tonics, would I?
It appears, irritatingly, that my mother was right all along. I must find an idiot-proof way of marking the stuff that goes into the deep freeze, otherwise yet another evening is going to occur when I produce an apple pie suspiciously absent of apple, but very generously filled with blanched fennel.
And yet there has been one happy outcome from my recent defrosting misery. I have, for many years, wondered what sort of a quantity 'nice' was. I can now tell you that a 'nice amount' of consommé is that which is required to break your toe as it drops from a height of about four feet, hotly pursued by a brick of Thai Chicken Curry.
Or possibly gooseberry ice-cream.
