DEEP-FREEZER DISCOVERIES

The Team Leader from Save-U-Time Cleaning Services, eyed me sternly, and announced that from henceforth my deepfreezer would be defrosted every six months. This declaration after her staff   spent  three hours chipping away at pre-historic ice deposits inside my freezer. 

Many icy mysteries  were revealed during the excavation. One was a bakkie/container of frozen garlicky green peppers. Long forgotten by Yours Truly, but once revealed, triggered a memory from the lean years of single parenting in Rhodesia*.

I  held the icy bakkie and remembered a budget dish that often appeared on  my table, and overcome  by  nostalgia, decided to put the peppers to good use and make the dish: Spanish Rice. Naturally the recipe is long gone, but I had a hazy memory of rice, green peppers, tomatoes,  grated cheese, onions – obviously, I mean who makes anything without onions? – and  the vital ingredient, a packet of Royco Minestrone soup powder. Not forgetting the final gourmet touch: Bay Leaves sticking through the cheesy crust.

 Rhodesia was not famed for its gourmet cooking in those years.  Famed for its beef – world class steak –  and for its tobacco. But gourmet cooking? Not so much.

I scratched around in my cupboards and found most of the ingredients, tossed in a few more vintage  survivors from the freezer, carefully positioned the bay leaves to decorative advantage, and in to the oven  it went.

Result? Not bad. Tasty. Economical. But not rave material. Some memories are best sighed over, and quietly left behind.

*Renamed Zimbabwe