In my freezer, items go to die a long, slow death of freezer burn. While I’m constantly chiding myself for not freezing food more often (especially homemade food that makes too much and I’ll eventually get sick of if I eat it three days in a row), the truth is, I don’t use my freezer much except for ice. Since college, I have kept one frozen dinner in my freezer for absolute emergencies—an emergency to me is when I am very very hungry but don’t feel like cooking something. You would agree this is an emergency if you have been around when I’m hungry, and there’s nothing to eat; it’s not a pleasant experience. But when these dire situations hit, and I opened my freezer to eye the frozen meal in question, typically, the meal went back in the freezer, and I ended up making noodles tossed in butter and Parmesan.

But I have bouts where I try to reconnect with my freezer. I will wrap items up and place them in it, fully intending to eat them at a later date. Unfortunately, I rarely mark the item, and this causes some confusion later when I can’t figure out what it is. Despite this, I’ve determined recently I’m going to eat through the items in my freezer. I’ve already had a lovely filet steak thanks to this initiative, and then it was time to try Trader Joe’s frozen manítaropita, which is filo wrapped around a mushroom mixture and is related, by name at least, to spanakopita. Manítaropita had spent way more time in its cold, boxy prison than is fair.

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Assessment: One reason this has been in my freezer so long is because they didn’t make much of any impression on me when I opened the box and first tried them. When I ate them this time, they were better than I remembered, and I liked them as a light dinner accompanied by a salad. The mushrooms are nicely seasoned and the dough is flaky, but I think I prefer another Trader Joe’s mushroom product. It’s similar concept—dough wrapped around mushrooms—but the dough is more substantial and buttery (my preference, you may prefer flaky), though I can’t remember the name of the product at all right now; I guess I’ll just have to purchase them, eat some and report back.