Does it fit?

J’accuse.

To be specific J’accuse the diced venison.

This is not the morose accusation of a jaded and ashen faced penitent after the excesses of the night before. I have not just staggered from the bathroom after an extended and close observation of the endlessly fascinating logo of some porcelain manufacturer. I am, as far as this season will allow, fighting fit. My gastric plumbing (as opposed to the plumbing of the shower) is in fine fettle. In fact the venison in the case is still uneaten.

The venison was brought into prominence because of the Fideuá. Fideuá, as I have occasion to mention before, is a form of Paella which uses pasta instead of rice. For Ceri and Dianne last night a taste of Spain involved making my own variety of Fideuá. As is my invariable custom I made too much and (much to Toni’s horror) with my own variations. I am still trying to understand that Fideuá is a pasta dish with chicken and sea food, rather than version which is chicken and sea food held together by a scattering of pasta. The edition last night was a sort of compromise with the pasta being evident but with a very real chance of finding some sort of meat in every fork full. It works for me.

As there is a limit to how much food you can stuff into your guests and yourself there is always a certain amount left over which, being a thrifty soul (I have a Cubs badge to prove it!) I freeze so that it can eventually be thrown away a year later rather than during the cleaning up process at the end of the meal. And that’s the problem.

I take every opportunity to restate certain gems of received wisdom. For example, I take every occasion to repeat Ruskin’s dictum that, “If a book is worth reading; it’s worth buying. In a similar vein I remember reading in some Domestic Hints section of a newspaper (as you can imagine, this is a ‘must read’ section for me!) that an empty freezer is an expensive freezer, because it takes more electricity to freeze empty spaces than if they are filled. I’m sure that desperate vicars would be able to make a series of sermons out of that portentous apercu, but I am just too tired to try and find the appropriate witty analogy.

Anyway, empty spaces are expensive. Empty spaces in your freezer should be filled, if necessary, with polystyrene blocks. This is the intelligent and thrifty approach. Having said that, have you ever put polystyrene blocks in your freezer? Have you ever seen a freezer anywhere, anytime, any universe with polystyrene blocks in it? If you have, please let me know, and try and encapsulate the full extent of your sad existence in no more than thirty words!

So if the inventive use of frozen polystyrene blocks was not something which I took on board (unlike, for example, keeping old toothbrushes because they are ideal for cleaning around the bottom of taps in those difficult-to-get-to places) I did take on board the concept that a half empty freezer was somehow morally indefensible and therefore for an individual to face the world with Puritan confidence it was essential to keep it as full as if a catastrophic shortage of everything was immanent.

So, I do and did and will.

This is obviously prudent and intelligent but it does not allow for over catering. Because there is no space available for anything extra. All spaces having been filled, not with appropriately cut polystyrene blocks, but rather with the scavenged spoils of a ravaged Tesco’s Reduced Counter.

Experienced freezer loaders will know that a freezer must always be approached with confidence and a muttered mantra of “There is always room for something more!”

There are many approaches to ensure that this statement becomes truth. There is the brute force approach which needs little explanation and, as long as the freezer door can close, all is right with the world, which is the approach of most men.

The interdimensional geometry approach is the more feminine method. This is a sub section of the gender differences which mean that women unpick knots whereas men buy another pair of shoes. The items in the freezer are rearranged with intelligence and reason and sure enough a space appears large enough to take the new item.

I favour the cross curricular approach which uses the best of both methods. In other words, I rearrange the contents of the freezer until my patience is exhausted and then resort to force. The force I use is not, however, the merely brute. I utilize the ‘frozen free flow’ capabilities of packets of small vegetables such as peas. A seemingly block like packet of peas can be transformed into a malleable packing material by a contemptuous fling to the floor, you can then mould the packet to fill a seemingly redundant space into which your rigid container of excess food would never fit, but releasing space elsewhere which eventually, through aggregation, accommodates the new item.

This is fine and dandy until you come up against The Damned Thing: the one item which, however you place it, wherever you place it, it manages to restrict and deter the placing of anything extra if it is in the freezer. In my case last night The Damned Thing was the packet of diced venison. This frozen item is not large and not, seemingly, obtrusive. It is fairly slim and only slightly bumpy in its vacuum packed plastic. But it stopped the placing of the new container by, infuriatingly, obtruding a corner here, or a bump of meat there, or obstructing a drawer top, or stopping a door closing. Moved, twisted, pushed and placed; it defied all attempts to persuade it to accept any further frozen food in its demesne.

The solution was of course obvious. I ate the remains of a tub of ice cream. Space!

It’s so encouraging to realise that whenever things look as though they are conspiring against you.

There is always a way!