The Inconvenience of the Unexpected

So my mother will be able to empathize when I tell her our freezer died sometime this past week… when, I’m not exactly sure. The package of vegetables I retrieved for dinner last night was cool, but not cold and certainly not frozen. It seemed that whenever there was a big event at my house growing up … graduation, wedding, holiday … a major appliance would give up on its intended electrical or mechanical obligation. I distinctly remember a refrigerator and a washing machine letting her down at the most inopportune time.


Is the unexpected really ever convenient? My husband will tell you I’m the optimist in the family, but if you think about it, even the pleasantly unexpected can be inconvenient. Guess that’s the control freak trumping the optimist.


Ah, well, I digress. So after dinner, we discover it was actually an appliance failure and not an electrical failure as the other freezer was still cold … which was the good news since that had the lamb I just processed and the all important bag of ice. No water hookup to the frig in our temporary residence, so we are making or buying ice during the construction. Little things you take for granted like automatic icemakers and electricity!


So there were at least a dozen containers of food I cooked extra and froze and about 30 – 35 pounds of beef and lamb. They were still cool, so we moved them to the refrigerator and plan to cook everything and refreeze within the next 48 hours. I have a lamb shoulder in the crock pot now and Carol (cousin Terry’s wife) is going to do a beef roast in her crock pot. There was about 10 – 12 pounds of ground beef, so we’ll have lots of hamburgers this Memorial Day weekend and stir fry the rest for adding to recipes later.


It was easier when I was a vegetarian. They don’t have these problems! Please look for a construction update soon to confirm that the meat wasn’t bad.