A Story From a Korean-American Childhood – Freezer Surprise
I’m not talking about scoring the last popsicle or finding pizza bites at the back of the freezer. If you’re Korean-American like me, or of some other first generation, you know of the surprises I’m referring to. And you’ve probably discovered some surprises in your mom’s kitchen over the years as well.
Jello in the Pantry and a Special Surprise in the Freezer
One day I was hungry for a sweet snack. I checked the freezer and the fridge. And all we had was some jello mix in the pantry.
It was surprising we even had this in the pantry. Usually we had nothing in the way of sweets except may be some yakgwa (traditional Korean honey cookies) during the holidays.
Well, it wasn’t the holidays so we didn’t have any yakgwa around. Jello would just have to do. My sweet tooth demanded it.
I boiled the water and mixed it in with the flavored gelatin. You see, this was back in the day when it wasn’t ready made and in convenient plastic tubs. (Ugh, I feel really old admitting that. Even though it really wasn’t long ago at all!)
Yes, I realized that it would be at least four hours before I could dig into the sweet snack but, like I said, there was nothing else.
Four long hours later, the jello was ready and so was I! But wait! I thought I spotted some Cool Whip in the freezer earlier. It’s probably ancient but it’s frozen and that stuff has so many preservatives that it never goes bad right?
Sure enough, there was a Cool Whip tub in the freezer.
I popped the lid open and saw that the contents were rather yellow for Cool Whip. Maybe it had gone bad?
Oh, it had gone bad alright.
What I had expected to be frozen whipped goodness, had turned out to be…
…a tub of frozen lard!
I had stumbled upon my mother’s vat of frozen lard! Cooking fats that had been collected from bacon drippings, skimmings from beef stews, and chicken fat! Yeah, chicken fat! Gross!!!
“There’s Always Room For Jello”… I beg to differ
Thank goodness I noticed the lard yellow color before scooping it out onto the jello…or worse, my MOUTH! 😖
The jello, by the way, that I didn’t even eat because my appetite had been utterly ruined by discovering the lard depository. (I just realized how frequently I lost my appetite in my mother’s kitchen. Did I just discover a new weight loss diet?? 🤔)
It wasn’t until a decade later that I found out this was a common thing for mom’s to do. May be it wasn’t in the freezer, but there was indeed some sort of cooking fat or oil tub. I’m sorry but I just have to say it, ‘EEEEEuuuuuwwww!’ I’m a mom now and I have yet to start a lard depository (besides my hips, lol – but crying inside). Perhaps in another decade or so, I’ll start my lard tub so I can surprise my kid one day. 😉
What have you been surprised by in your mom’s freezer? Do I really want to know?…Yeah I do! So share in the comments and let’s commiserate!