How Do I Cook This?

A couple months before my parents moved away, my mom told me that I would get whatever they had in their freezer that they weren't able to use up by the time they moved. I promptly suggested that they go out right away and buy a side of beef.

When the day came, my dad brought up two good sized boxes, each about 1 foot cubed, full of... stuff. I honestly can't tell you what all is in there, as even though it's been over a month I have yet to look inside the boxes to see what I have. I keep forgetting all about it, until I go into my freezer for some ice cream or something, and notice those two boxes of stuff sitting there. But of course I'm always distracted with something else at the time and have forgotten about it again by the time I'm finished my bowl of ice cream.

I think I'll have to make it a project this weekend to pull out those boxes and sort through it all. I'll also have to make a list while I'm at it, and stick it on the fridge so I don’t forget what I have. I'm constantly forgetting I have various things until I see it when getting something else. Fortunately I’m not in the habit of buying perishable foods unless I have an immediate use for it (and I'll only buy just enough for what the recipe needs) or am planning on putting all or part in the freezer right away, so it's not the end of the world if I forget to use something until half a year after I bought it.

But the main thing on my mind is that I'm positive there will be things in there that I've never cooked before. For example, I do know, because my mom told me, that there is a whole chicken in there. I've bought chicken breasts, legs and processed/packaged chicken foods, but never an entire chicken. Aside from the fact that it would probably take me a whole week to eat, I don't even know if I have the correct knives to cut a chicken up, let alone knowing the proper method of cutting it.

Similarly, I also got some of the leftover items from their fridge on moving day. In addition to the typical cheese, margarine, etc. I now have a partial package of miso that was my sister's. I'm sure most North Americans have never even heard of it before. Miso is a common item in Japanese cooking, so I doubt I'll find any recipes that use it in my “Betty Crocker Mobile Cookbook” iPhone app. I just checked, and as expected there are zero results. The “Allrecipes.com” app only has one, for miso soup (fortunately, that was the first thing I wanted to try). But the “Epicurious” app found 82 recipes, so I'll have to check those out. Maybe I'll luck out and find a way to use both the miso and some of the frozen foods in the same dish.

But having all this food I don't know how to cook is a good thing. It'll be a good experience, learning to cook all these things that I've never cooked before. Plus, one can never complain about free food! And since there's so much there that it might even take me half a year to get through it all, maybe that'll be enough time to build some new habits and get me out of the old cooking (or lack thereof...) ruts I've gotten into over the years. But of course there will always be a special place in my heart (and stomach!) for pizza.