[Sca-cooks] freezer recommendations
Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius at verizon.net
Mon Dec 22 04:41:23 PST 2003
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
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