Ice ice baby

How brilliant are freezers? Seriously, I know this sounds like a strange and somewhat rhetorical question, but aren't they actually great? I've grown up with a good old fridge/freezer combo wherever I've lived but, apart from a convenient place to temporarily store the occasional ready meal, bag of frozen peas or tub of ice cream and a suitable place to stick all those souvenir fridge magnets from my travels, I haven't really made the most of said appliance. The Yorkshireman tends to use it as his own personal McCain Micro Chips storage unit (*whispers* I think he might have a bit of an addiction…) but our little freezer was otherwise just home to half-finished bags of unloved frozen vegetable mixes and forgotten Birds Eye steam bags. Until recently…

You see, as I posted back in January, the Yorkshireman and I have been endeavouring to get fit and healthy. Well, me more than him to be honest, but then I need much more improvement in both areas. Apart from going to the gym three times a week, I've also been trying to eat a little more healthily, including cutting down on a lot of processed stuff that is high in salt and sodium. I know, I'm so angelic the glint from my halo is blinding you, right? Well, there are still a few things that Asda and Tesco will be bringing to the table (for example bread - someone who bakes bread clearly has too much time on their hands) but I have been making a real effort to make a lot of things from scratch. Like, in my own kitchen. With real ingredients and everything. It involves a lot of peeling, chopping and burning myself, but thus far the results haven't been too shabby!

So far I've made my own lentil curry, a savoury rice dish, tomato and chilli pasta sauce and several incarnations of soup, all of which have been edible. Yay me! But the only problem is that any health benefits of making it yourself are perhaps diminished somewhat by the fact that you now have like 10 servings of soup, 6 servings of soup and 4 servings of curry all needing eaten within 3 days. They may be healthy individually but that's a whole lot of calories right there! What to do? Enter the freezer!

Yes - freeze those bad boys in handy single servings and they will last for weeks! It never really occurred to me before but apparently this is what organised adults actually do. Very popular amongst the organic-obsessed mummy crowd - they're apparently forever puréeing and freezing obscure fruits and vegetables in ice cube trays for their beloved overindulged offspring.

You should see my house when I've been on a cooking spree though. Every available surface is covered in plastic containers or resealable food bags full of multicoloured liquids while I wait for them to cool enough to put them in the freezer. The last time I was running out of space and wondering if perhaps the Yorkshireman would stay absorbed in Interwebzland and thereby completely still long enough for me to rest a container or two on his person. Luckily for him I decided against it, especially when I noticed the freezer bags were getting somewhat, erm, "soft" with the heat and that one or two had consequently spilled on the table. Oops. Note to self - leave to cool in the pot for a while next time…

But yes, an hour or two later and you'll find me on the floor of the kitchen playing some kind of Tetris-meets-Jenga game to try and fit everything into the big, white, icy box of wonder. It doesn't sound like much fun and, well, it's not exactly up there amongst my favourite pastimes, but it's worth it when all I have to do to get a nutritious meal full of things I actually like is to take it out of the freezer the night before.

Of course there are pitfalls - all this healthy cooking might be improving my body but alas my mind is just as ditzy as it ever was and so actually remembering to defrost my wonderful little bags of nutritious delights is a whole different matter. More than once have I wandered up to the fridge, trying to remember what I had planned for that night's dinner, opened the door, realisation has dawned and I have sworn loudly.

However, in spite of my failing memory, I shall persevere in my pursuit of health and fitness… and many more plastic containers.