Dear Folks, As you know, recently I've been babbling on and on about my recent cooking urge, recipes and the fact that both my refrigerator freezer and my chest freezer are now filled to overflowing with the leftovers. Several of you have suggested that I invite one or two friends over for dinner or, in fact, our whole gang for a virtual feast! Although that's really tempting, I'm not one to give up while there's still hope for me yet. Today I figured out that my problem wasn't with the volume of the leftovers I've recently stored in my freezers, it was the freezer space that I was lacking. So this evening I was determined to do something drastic with the chest freezer. None of you want me to give you slightest hint of what has been stored in there or for how many years. Just be content with knowing that I don't have a clue what some of it is or who how long it's been in there. OK, let me give you a hint. This evening I decided to get rid of the "unknowns" and was surprised to find an entire Gingerbread (or Anise) cake that was brought back from Switzerland in ca 1987. On top of it in piped icing was the red cross on a white background, the symbol of the Swiss Canton of Solothurn and the wording on it was "Gruss aus Bettlach" (loosely translated as "Greetings from Bettlach"--a small village there). As a result of my initial efforts to cull out what used to be perfectly good food, I've already filled two plastic grocery bags with the items and they'll be hauled out to the curb come trash day. But I didn't want to stop there; I wanted to clear out the entire chest freezer. However, I had a problem. It's been so many years since I've defrosted the freezer, I couldn't remove the wire baskets because of the frost buildup. Therefore, the only solution was for me to remove all of the frozen food in the freezer that I could reach, store it all in my refrigerator, unplug the freezer, let it thaw out on its own with the lid up, tomorrow afternoon clean out the remaining food in the very bottom (again I don't have a clue what's down there), sop up the ice water, scrub down the insides and put everything that's fit to be kept back in it. However, comma, I don't have the room in my refrigerator to even begin to stuff everything in there. But maybe tomorrow I'll do what I used to do back in the olden days when I used to periodically thaw my chest freezer out. Store as much as I could in the refrigerator and wrap the rest of it in several thicknesses of newspaper as insulation. Then I would put the tea kettle on to boil and pour the hot water into pans and set them on the bottom of the freezer to help thaw it out. It was an almost all-day project but when the freezer was fresh and clean and plugged in again enough to cool down sufficiently and all of the frozen food put back in it, it was a satisfying job well done. But I have two problems with all of the above. (1) Where do I find the energy? and (2) with all the old stuff removed from the bottom of the freezer, will my freezer then have to run overtime to keep what's left in it at 0 degrees or less? In fact, regarding (1) above, wherever did I find all the energy to start such a project this evening in the first place? I guess I'm still obsessed with cooking and if this sort of thing continues, I may need professional help. Is there such an organization as CA (Cooks Anonymous)? "Hello, my name is Vee and I'm a cook-aholic!" vee