Tis the Seasons

I was catching up on reading last night and ran across an interesting blog entry by foodie Mark Ruhlman. He was talking about what he felt were essentials for his "freezer pantry" -- you know, things you should always have on hand, but this time it was things in the freezer. His list included:

• Tomato Paste (for sauces and stocks)
• Chicken Stock (frozen in quart ziplock bags)
• Slabs of Bacon (for bacon slabbing, I guess)
• Chipotles in Adobo Sauce (I'm now lost)
• Thai Curry pastes (Seriously? It's plural)
• Dried Red Chili peppers (When ordinary intestinal burning isn't enough)
• Fresh Ginger (No word on MaryAnn)
• Phyllo Dough and puff pastry (For the hordes of roaming ravenous Greeks)
• Baguettes from On the Rise Bakery (find a good bakery near you)

This list, of course, inspired me to see what I had in MY freezer, so I could see how close I came to the wish list of a respected food author and critic. Upon 35-second inspection, I discovered I have:

• Bags of frozen fruit (for smoothies. as long as the neighbor has orange juice)
• One Breyer's Neopolitan Ice Cream only eaten by TeenTuna (meaning 80% of the Strawberry is already gone)
• One SuperFruits! Ice Cream originally poo-poohed by TeenTuna (until she tasted it and declared it awesome. Dammit)
• One Orange Sherbert (Not mine. I'm just holding)
• One pkg "most excellent beef" (Best not to ask)
• One pkg chicken breasts
• Two pkgs brussel sprouts (YES, I LIKE THEM!)
• Two pkgs hash browns
• 35 One whole bag minus one (I'm guessing) Fun Pops with Assorted Fruity Flavor.
  

That's all there is. No pastes. No stock. No phyllo or puff pastry or baguettes. No ginger or peppers. I don't even have any bacon slabs to wrap around my fun pops with assorted fruity flavor. No wonder there are 35 left. Who wants a baconless popsicle? Oh, and yeah, it's about negative 80 jillion outside, making popsicle consumption a little...well..., redundant if nothing else. I think my only hope, Obi-Wan Kenobe, would be to use the yellow fun pops and try to pass them off as chicken stock. Either that or melt them down and make some sort of reduction.

Hmmm. Maybe I'll just hold out until summertime when the living' is easy.
How many more days until Popsicle season?