Lost in the Icebox

My refrigerator is generally pretty orderly, since I tend to throw out food when the expiration date is passed and/or it's starting to look mushy, fuzzy, or dangerous. (This is not native behavior, The Wife will attest, but a result of domestication.)

The freezer is a different story. It's an icy Sargasso Sea of old leftover meals, odd chunks of variety meat, vegetables, tubs of duck fat, and bags of heirloom grains. I know it's impossible, since we moved into this house just a year ago, but some of the meat looks downright prehistoric.

So, today, out it all came onto the kitchen counter for a good sifting and sorting:



About a third of it went into trash, and the rest is now back in the freezer, fussily arranged on the little racks (it's one of those side-by-side models with four wire basket/racks). Meat on the bottom, vegetables and grains next, then premade food and leftovers, and miscellaneous stuff like bread and sauces on the top.

The good news: I discovered I have several weeks worth of meat on hand. The bad news: two weeks from now it will be a complete disaster again.