Mum's First Freezer

I was watching a repeat of an old H E Bates The Darling Buds of May (I absolutely love this as it accurately portrays the feeling of life at that particular time) recently, where an old Lyons Made freezer with the double sided black lids was featured and it bought back a particular memory of when I was young.  

Mum's/our first family freezer was an old Lyon's Made freezer that had been used in a shop. One of the black double-lidded jobs that used to store the ice cream and is probably more associated with that.  Anyway it was going cheap (where Dad procured it from I cannot remember) and as pennies were tight, alternative options and solutions often came into play in our household.  

The ice cream freezer had been bought as a result of my Nan being the first in the family to trial a freezer and being very happy with hers and swearing by them, mum and dad decided to dip their toes in the water as it were.  Needless to say my Nan's freezer was not a second hand ice cream shop version, but a posh new one.  I think the other reason they bought second hand was to see if they liked this way of storing food before saving up and investing in a new one.

One of the downsides of living in a village years ago (and in some instances today) was that in our particular village there were hardly any shops so having an additional source of being able to store food long term and safely was needed, especially as we as a family only went bulk food shopping once a month.  I think a lot of my ways of storing food has been influenced over the years because of this.

As a result of being able to store more food, and foods we had not been able to store much of, and as a result of the new to us freezer being stored in the garage, we then had a new routine in that we would go "shopping in the freezer" on a daily basis for things to cook the following day.  To this day when I have my freezers running, I too go shopping in the freezer.

Needless to say that particular freezer did sterling service for a while, I think it was over a year, before it started not holding the ice quite as well and mum and dad then invested in a new one, which was brand new, clean and shiny.  However, lovely as it was  the new freezer for me did not quite have the same character or foibles of the old battered freezer which had come to us via means to an end solution of my father.

Does anyone else remember their "firsts" of new to them equipment?

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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