[Sca-cooks] freezer recommendations

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>Phlip commented:
>>Ask Rob. He tends to have his own creative filing system- if he didn't
>>know what it was, it may well have gone into freezerly depths, the like of
>>which require a polar expedition.
>Which reminds me...
>Our new house has an alcove in the laundry room which is for an 
>upright freezer.
>I am strongly thinking about getting one.
>Does anyone have any recommendations about any particular brands or 
>features I should look for?

I think paying extra for a frost-free freezer _may_ be 
semi-redundant. It seems like most people don't open their 
deep-freezes nearly as often as they do their refrigerators, or the 
smaller freezers therein, so frost buildup is less of an issue, and 
frost-free models seem to have a greater tendency to freezer-burn 
less-than-perfectly-wrapped foods. (They seem to work via some kind 
of ice sublimation.) The freezer we have is kind of a pain to defrost 
(it involves setting up a hose at the bottom of the freezer to drain 
off melted frost accumulations into a drainage pan), so it's in 
moderately severe need of a defrost. We've not done it yet, really, 
in almost four years. As horrifying as that may sound, only now has 
the need become even remotely serious. We could wait another year, if 
we had to. We will, in fact, do it this winter, well before Chinese 
New Year: we've concluded that the Bush administration must be a 
punishment from The Kitchen God. But then, to juxtapose, the Yankees 
have not won a World Series for more than three years, which supports 
Einstein's claims about divine, Infinite Subtlety.

>They seem to come in various sizes, but all seem to be much cheaper 
>than refrigerators which is surprising to me. Should I get the 
>biggest which will fit? Or does that end up costing you a lot more 
>in energy costs?

Again, it seems to be largely dependent on how often you open the 
thing. We usually open ours once every day or two. If you're going to 
hang in the open doorway, several times a day, trying to decide 
between the Salisbury Steak or the Chicken Pot Pie (figuratively 
speaking), your freezer is going to be doing a lot more [costly] 
freezing than insulation. If not, it's more the reverse, and it's a 
surprisingly cheap appliance, I find, and it also may well save you 
on food costs, as you can buy more supplies when they're in season 
and/or on sale. I can't easily tell you how much ours is costing us, 
because we got it just as we moved into this apartment; I can tell 
you how much higher our average electric bill is, but that would be 
sort of meaningless, given two bedrooms instead of a studio, three 
air conditioners instead of one, three computers instead of one, a 
dishwasher, more lights, etc.

The only thing I can think of to add is that you may experience 
greater frost problems, living in a relatively humid part of the 
world (so do I, but it's not as constant a thing here in New York as 
it seems to be in coastal Texas).

As superficially naive as it may sound, you might talk to a salesman. 
Obviously he's going to try to steer you toward the most expensive 
models, but all other things being equal, there's no reason for him 
not to (and plenty of reason _for_ him to) steer you toward the 
better buy or better model between two similarly-priced freezers. The 
guy who sold us ours, for example, was strongly of the opinion that 
unless one is a hunter or a butcher (or, as he put it, intended to 
put a mother-in-law or two in there), there's not much point to one 
of those big top-loading models, and that an upright model is a much 
better use of the space. I still, occasionally, regret that choice, 
when dealing with my mother-in-law...

Adamantius