I thought that Sarah's excellent post under "this is cuuutttte" deserved its own thread. Perhaps finding dead animals in the freezer is something one runs across when forced to clean the little cold box. When I moved into my little place in the woods there was this medium sized box, just a-humming away, in the corner of one of the six rooms (if you include the bathroom) in the basement. Only one room is finished down there, despite the walk out basement aspect of the building. The finished room is where the hot tub resides. It's a room that is paneled in box car panelling, called such because it resembles the insides of old frieght cars. Horizontal and tongue n grooved hard yellow pine, it matches the rest of the house (it is a log house you recall) but finds itself out of character with an otherwise rather cold and sterile concrete palace that is the basement. The freezer is part of the cold and sterile part. Freezer is next to an almost finished cold room in the northeast corner of the house. It would make Patrick a great darkroom, dustproof and soundproof, and well insulated. It could be used for other thing as well. I don't get the idea that the former owners used the area for parsing body parts or cleaning fish, but rather for storing potatoes. It is empty now. Back to the freezer...a buzzing away. In the adjacent cement and bare lightbulb room... In the local papers over the years, there have been several stories of freezer-finds, including frozen pets, frozen babies, frozen animal and human parts. I was a little concerned. I paid a little extra to the seller of the place, because she "didn't want to move it and it works so well and I could have whatever was in it for $20." So I bought it. Unopened. When I did muster nerve enough to crack the lid (It's a chest type freezer, and on old one, where if and over which an old doddering senile member of the household happened to be leaning, and was pushed, well, you know the story)... When I opened it, nothing. It was MR. Clean Spic n Span empty. E-M-P-T-Y. So, those like Sarah who make discoveries in freezers...may be lucky. What's the point of an Empty Freezer anyway?

Usually to make you feel more pathetic than you might already be feeling. Its like looking into your fridge even though you know nothing is in there... And hoping that when you open it, that there will be this magical transformation of food showing up in an empty fridge... We have one of those chest freezers at our house, I went digging in there one day, and found some pretty old shit. I must say first however that there is enough crusted ice in there to scrape off and make a snowman with. Anyway, one day when I was snooping around in there I found a cube fish, it probably has been in that freezer since I was a little kid, and probably will be till the day that freezer up and dies. The brick it self was about half my size, and I have to say the fish inside was just a little bit smaller... Funny how I never remember my father catching anything like that.

Being raised on an angus beef farm by generations of bootleggers and Appalachian moonshiners...we had a big freezer when I was young. We'd go a-hunting in the big cold box, amidst berries and corn on the cob, often to find some steaks from "Stubby the 13th" or "Alfred" or some other aptly named steer who was once a dear friend, now dead, dissected, properly aged, and wrapped neatly in white paper with name and date and cut of meat inscribed in black grease pencil, my father's scrawling hand. My dad always used to both bless the meat by name and curse the animal in remembrance of the animal's sometimes awe or fear inspired feats while living, such running through the five strand stout fences which could not contain it, or simply for the sheer excitement dragging someone around by the horns. My first recollection of pre-freezer barn life was face down in a gutter of shit after getting the daylights kicked out of me by one of those beasts. Don't recall who did it, but I remember eating animal flesh of a near relative and my father laughing about the revenge we humans can take. Each bite of steak came with a smile and a fond memory of..."who's got the last smile now, you furry dumb beligerant food chain link, four footed hoofed grain burner?" Actually, like my grandfather treated the trout he raised (we could not fish or even eat one he caught), or realistically perhaps, the family treated like pets every animal we butchered, and their nourishment was real nearly spiritual sustenance. The only book I have from my father is one on the diseases of cattle. He treated them more than fairly. I grew up knowing that the meat I ate came from one of them in the pastures, fed by the grain my grandfather threshed and cleaned and stored, and nursed to health and kept alive and fattening through all sorts of travail...until knocked senseless with my uncle's sledge or later shot point blank before its throat was slit. No sirreee... no shrunk wrapped sterile meat in that freezer. Every frozen chunk of chuck had a history, a name, a legacy. May be if I raised animals in such a loving comprehensive and give-away manner today I would eat red meat. But the stuff in the market, no. Not in my freezer.

In my opinion I eat meat because I am an omnivore, I enjoy a good steak, and yet at the same time I enjoy a good salad. I couldn't be a vegan, living in the household I have for so long and in the state I do just has lead me to like meat products, I was much one for fish, but then again it wasn't that common in my house. Although I never had much good feelings in the way of likeing fish, I love sushi... Its kinda the I love tomatos but can't stand catsup idea... Who know, I just love meat, and praise all to those who should choose to be a vegan, nothing wrong with it and I give you props, because I know I couldn't do it.

i cooked a bitchin london broil Sat night. Its a rarity I crave such an item.

HAMBURGERS... SPAM THROWING CONTEST... It was a night of meat last night.

Yes, but there's nothing worse than freezer burnt broccoli. I've gotten into the habit of Kentucky Legend Brown Sugar Cured Ham. I am not sure it is good for me.

is there any body out there making moonshine. when i was 7 years old i would help grandpa make his whisky. that was 40+ years ago. i know have a son and i would like to teach him the family way. tanks rockey