Frostbite

no, not me, silly. after all, it's 50 degrees outside. nevermind that it's supposed to snow over the weekend. palm sunday...i wonder how jesus would have reacted had the hebrews pelted him with snowballs instead of hailing him with palms.
no, the frostbite refers to the state of most things in my freezer (minus the crawfish tails!) after a very hectic week last week, i finally opened the freezer door to discover a few dehydrated, pale chunks that will take a brilliant mind to 1) identify and 2) make palatable again. see, as a poor college student (emphasize POOR), i do not have the luxury of tossing something out just because it has the consistency of pemmican (mmmm.) after all, if the tibetans can bravely dry an entire leg of yak outdoors and then gnaw the dried meat OFF THE BONE, so can i! here is a list of the jerkified relics to be found:
1) salmon. there was just enough orange peeking through all the white for me to guess that this was fish and not some horribly miscolored, misshapen steak. although you never know. i cannot decide between buttering the heck out of it in an effort to revive it, or simply tea-smoking it like my original plan.
2) "stir fry vegetables." apparently i opened a package of these handy, albeit untasty morsels a while back to save time. conveniently labeled for times like these! but despite my innate asian frugal nature, these will be donated to the confused squirrels outside who can't decide if the ground is thawed out enough to bury nuts.
3) pork rib? probably still frightening that i have thawed it out and still am not quite sure what it is. it doesn't smell bad, but it looks dreadful....the colors haven't changed much, but the surface is dry dry dry dry dry. i am hoping intensive braising might rehydrate it, or that i can use it as a soup bone.
4) tilapia! easily identifiable because it is whole, fins, head, tail, and all. this last item gave me some comfort----if in the odd event we were completely buried by a blizzard and we all died, and nobody could find the city of cleveland for 400 years, one lucky paleoanthropologist in the future would discover my freezer and write: "they ate REAL FOOD!"