Frozen Food
I am staring into my open freezer. Neither hungry nor depressed, I’m simply examining the collection which over the past two decades has come to dominate the space.
Among my gallery of arctic works are 2 banana peels, vintage ’97 with their wonderful black patina, a ceramic-like bunch of champagne grapes, ‘98 and an unripe kiwi which I mistakenly bit into in 2001. Some of these pieces, like a ten-year-old satsuma plum half, seem to thrive in the frozen environs while others morph into bizarre creatures. A white peach from ’03 now looks somewhat scrotal while a fuyu persimmon has over the past several months become enveloped by a mysterious white mold.
My role as kitchen curator began several years back when I opened my freezer and discovered a wayward bialy cozying up to a bag of ice. But unlike most people who would’ve simply thrown the misplaced item away, I felt compelled to examine it. Running my fingers over its cold stone-like surface, I was struck by its flawless preservation. The color, the speckling, the texture were virtually unchanged. Unlike its less fortunate brother I’d devoured months earlier along with a swab of whitefish salad. Not wanting to deprive the surviving sibling a final worthy resting place, I returned him to his sub-freezing abode.
And when a few weeks later, I was about to run to the compost with a decaying green pepper, I hesitated. Not that I was totally conscious of what I was about to do. For a force as great as the universe—well not really—but some inexplicable urge compelled me to put that pepper into the same freezer compartment I’d previously dedicated to that erstwhile New York bialy.
My foray into frozen food had begun.
Next came a lime half, whose protruding juice sacs yielded within just weeks a crystalline appearance. A handful of cherry tomatoes followed, which truth be told, I’d bought expressly for freezing and remain now, ten years and a move across town later, in flawless condition.
Moving day brought the usual mix of nostalgia and excitement—along with occasional waves of mild torment, for I knew that once the fridge was unplugged I would have only so much time to get my collection to its new digs. It was June. It was California. And my collection’s chief nemesis was beating down through a transparent sky.
And so with the movers safely out of sight, I pulled the refrigerator plug, primed my red igloo cooler with my stash of blue gel freezer packets and transferred the ice-bound vault into my waiting truck, its air conditioning running full blast.
Fortunately my new place was just fifteen minutes away—but that was just long enough to sink into a manic spiral of what if’s.
What if I got into a car accident? “I’ll give you all the cash you want as long as you let me get my frozen scraps safely out of the heat,” I’d have to say.
What if the police stopped me, suspicious that I was involved in an illicit drug-running operation? “That really is a piece of uncooked white asparagus. It’s been sitting in my freezer for 4 years,” I would swear to them.
And what if I successfully transferred everything to my new freezer and then there was a power failure. Maybe it’s time to invest in solar panels, I thought.
Such devotion I dedicated to this seemingly purposeless vocation. “What the hell are you doing?” my partner shouted when he finally noticed my collection.
For some reason, he did not share my passion for freezing.
No matter, I knew I was onto something. A cryogenics of food? Perhaps. A fantasy flashed in my mind as I envisioned a steady stream of checks from hapless souls commissioning me to freeze their foodstuffs. My bizarre vision, though, didn’t last long. With the freezer door open in my new sunlit kitchen, a rush of warm air dislodged one of those cherry tomatoes sending it to the floor like a billiard ball crashing onto cement. A sound that belted me quickly back to reality. I resigned myself to the fact that there would be no calls from Walt Disney disciples begging for their free veggie cryogenics consultation.
Scientific breakthroughs notwithstanding, I had, no doubt, discovered a new art form. L’art des alimentations congelées—the art of frozen food. Never mind that I wasn’t a visual artist. Here was a legitimate reason to meditate on the ever-present hum of the refrigerator—a sound only noticeable in its absence. Staring into my icy cave, I felt truly at peace. This was a habit I had developed as a child.
I suppose it stemmed from my anticipation of the evening meal.
“Honey, what kind of vegetable would you like?” I can still hear my mother beckoning me with a package of Birds Eye frozen green beans. Of course, ours was no different from most New York City households in the 70's with its clutter of ready-made foods. TV dinners, frozen pizza, pre-cooked French fries, all poked through the simulated winter of those non-frost free days. In a sense it was a processed existence, yet pervading all that factory feasting was the heartfelt emotion that nourished me nonetheless. Just the way my mother snipped the plastic before sentencing the vacuum pack to a full rolling boil carried every bit of homespun love as if she had toiled all afternoon in a garden handpicking the beans herself.
Now, more than three decades later, I’m still connected to that frozen world. Only my freezer has taken on a novel function. At 13.4 cubic feet, my loyal white Kenmore is probably the world’s only true micro-museum.
With an artificial polar breeze grazing my face, I ponder my latest addition—a ginger root from last year which is already showing the signs of premature aging—its wrinkled visage making it look rather pathetic next to a piece of pain au levain ‘94, which like most breads never seem to age.
If only I could stay so well preserved. And here perhaps lies the secret to my obsession. Owing to a simple technology that brings a constant 28 degrees Fahrenheit, I can grab hold of a piece of the past.
Looking into that perfectly maintained bialy—one of twelve sent by my mother who thought nothing of spending ten dollars to ship four dollars worth of gluten across country—I am looking into my own innocence. OK. Maybe I’m exaggerating but as the first piece in my collection dating back to 1993, it represents a connection to my final days of youth.
If only I had started my freezing earlier.
I imagine myself caressing a piece of the golden delicious apple I was munching just before signing the lease on my first apartment in Boston. Or holding a remnant of the watermelon slice, so satisfying on that sultry June day of my high school graduation party? And what if I could touch that chocolate chunk cookie I was eating the time my best friend crashed up my father’s car? Well, some things, I guess, are better left unfrozen.
Too bad. I’ll just have to settle for a frozen timeline that began in my mid-thirties. One that winds its way through the lemon and avocado groves of the Southern California foothills to my little, sunlit kitchen with its stockpile of decaying vegetables I’ll never eat. And when, thirty years from now, my arthritic hand reaches into what will undoubtedly be a very crowded freezer, I wonder: Will I remain obsessed extracting a piece of my younger world suspended in time? Or will I finally jettison the collection while quietly telling myself I came, I thawed, I conquered.
