When Tony died, he left us with a deep freezer full of meat.

There were supplies for smoking BBQ, like ribs and pork butts likely purchased on sale. He also had vacuum sealed BBQ he’d already cooked saved for us to reheat later. We had ordered beef and pork from farmers, so there were cuts left from those hauls. He and I had expensive taste in steak, and we had a hoard of fillets we’d fix for covid date nights. Lastly, there was deer meat from his hunting trips.

A lot of the stuff I cooked in the year after his death. I taught myself how to use the pellet grill and smoked pork and ribs. The sous vide we used for steaks was still set to the right time and temperature, giving me a cheat code on how to prep the steaks.

Oh, but the deer meat. One time he made chili and only used deer meat in it. In my humble opinion, it was absolutely disgusting. After that, I couldn’t/wouldn’t eat anything with deer meat. He tried to hide it and mix it with beef or pork but from there on out I could always taste it. (Deer meat and tequila have a similar effect on me, ick.)

I knew when he died, I would never cook an ounce of that stuff in the freezer. I had plans to offer it to his friends. But that offer to come pilfer the freezer never made it past my internal dialogue.

Then last week, I got the itch. First, I texted his best friend to confirm he didn’t want to make any questionable gastrointestinal choices. Spoiler alert, he did not. Then my youngest put on a pair of winter gloves and we got to work. I directed and he dug it out. In all, we filled about 3 trash bags. Most of it was the dreaded deer meat.

There were a few finds I wish I had found earlier that still had to be thrown out. No one wants freezer burned ham from 2020. But I’m also not going to berate myself for wasting ham. I cleaned out the freezer five years later because although it wasn’t a mentally or physically taxing job, it wasn’t a job that sat in my face every day. The stars finally aligned the night before a trash day to get rid of all the meats.