Reddy for Some Frozen Vegetables?

Since I mentioned Reddy Kilowatt in my post about Sutter's, I’ll feature one of his Ohio Edison ads today.

It’s an attractive ad with a great Reddy drawing that appeared in the Lorain Journal on July 3, 1963, promoting electric food freezers. The idea is that with a freezer, you can enjoy “garden fresh” foods all year long.

I wonder if the average consumer still freezes excess produce? I kind of doubt it.

When my parents first got their upright freezer in the late 60s/early 70s, they froze a lot of seasonal fruits, like strawberries and cherries (which my siblings and I had to pick, in a possible violation of child labor laws). Nowadays, you can buy strawberries at your favorite grocery store year long.

Plus, I think many Americans have developed an attitude towards what they consider “fresh” when it comes to food. I’m afraid that many of them have become food snobs who would turn up their nose at thawing out frozen vegetables for use in their exotic culinary creation of the day. “Fresh and local” ingredients rule in 2019.

As for me, I wouldn’t dream of freezing stuff like leftover corn on the cob or strawberries. I just eat them every day until they're gone. Freezing them would be like abandoning them in a snowy wasteland where they would be forgotten. (By the way, I had my first Fenik’s corn of the season last weekend, which was superb.)

Anyway, my parents’ freezer (which Mom still uses) eventually found its main purpose: to store all the perch and walleye that Dad “harvested” from Lake Erie. We ate pretty well year-round thanks to Dad’s fishing skills and that freezer.