Second Fridge

 

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Ms. Reilly remembers an Italian-American friend whose family removed shelves from an extra fridge to hang homemade sausages.

Jonathan Ammons, a food writer in Asheville, N.C., contends that refrigerators transmit culture as much as they chill food. “I am a third-generation multiple fridge-freezer kid,” he said. “It is as deep a part of my culinary heritage as candied yams and sugar beets.”

He currently owns one refrigerator and one stand freezer, packed this time of year with discounted whole ducks and broth.

Mr. Ammons’s parents have three refrigerators, including one that he stocks with prepared meals for his mother, who is ill and bedridden. He traces the family’s desire to have more than one refrigerator to his grandmother’s traditions and preservation practices, common in Appalachia.

“Her house in Bakersville had the smokehouse out back and the canning shed,” he said. “And they had smoked meat. When the freezer came, it became an irreplaceable thing, an ingrained thing with my grandmother, that if you have a freezer, you can preserve things.

“I see that as an aspect of Appalachian culture: preserving the things you love and prioritizing it — and growing enough of it that you can stay there through the hard times.”