Once upon a time, meals were simple. You (and I) bought something, cooked it, and ate. If there were leftovers, we ate them the next day, or they languished in back of the fridge until they bloomed into unrecognizable clumps of once-food. The End.
Things are different now. Not only are there multiple gourmet grocers that will deliver anything from powdered lemongrass to Ethiopian coffee to your doorstep at almost any time of day, but there are dozens of meal-planning apps, subscription cooking kits, and food & drink magazines offering a dizzying array of options for the person in charge of domestic feeding. Preparing and eating food is supposedly a source of experiential pleasure, and home-cooked meals are generally better for you than restaurant meals or — God forbid! — fast food. But the sheer volume of advice and options is enough to make anyone order a pizza and call it a night.
But those of us who cook at home more often than not, the real razzle-dazzle of the mealmaker movement is the gadgets. There’s the slow cooker — grandma of the Instant Pot, poor cousin of the Le Creuset. There’s the sous vide device, with an attendant app that basically boils your food in a bag while you pretend you’re French or otherwise gifted in les artes culinaire. And then there is the vacuum sealer. I trace all my kitchen issues back to it, the way one does to their parents or a bad experience with a dentist that one time in 1977.
Technically, a vacuum sealer sucks air out of special, overpriced bags full of food, and then seals the bag, making food last almost forever (okay, six months) in the freezer and come out tasting freshly-made. It also made me into someone who acted like she was cooking for an army all the time. Who doesn’t want meatballs in the freezer? Or chicken cutlets? Enchiladas? Arroz con pollo? Jambalaya! Lasagne! I gushed hysterically to everyone about it. My friends bought vacuum sealers. It was my thing.
And it worked, for years. We always had something in the freezer I could pull…
