Appliance Gremlins

We haven’t been here two years yet and we’ve bought:

• The kitchen range (gas cook top and gas oven)
• The kitchen wall oven (electric)
• The kitchen fridge
• The dishwasher
• The basement fridge
• The basement stove
• A new upright freezer
• And now . . another new upright freezer

I would say “what else can go wrong” but I know better than to say that.

Today, one of the upright freezers we brought from Texas went out. Dead! Today our high was supposed to be 108 and I think the heat index was about 200 degrees.

Vince went upstairs and there was water all under the freezer and starting to drain across the floor. He opened it and things were starting to defrost. He came downstairs ranting that I had left the freezer door open and ruined all the food. “How hard is it to close a freezer door?” It’s very possible that I accidentally didn’t close the freezer door but I try to be very careful about checking freezer doors – open it, get what I need, shut the door and come back a few minutes later to make sure it was really shut. I went upstairs and most everything was frozen fairly solid still. A few things were starting to defrost but not enough that I was concerned about them. The frost was what had mainly started to melt and run out.

Vince closed the freezer door and was not happy with me. I wasn’t happy with myself but I kept thinking . . I haven’t been in that freezer since at least Monday. Today is Friday. First, we should have seen water on the floor before now and second, after four days, things should be starting to seriously defrost. I went back upstairs to make sure it was cooling down and it wasn’t. The motor was not even running. I turned it off, turned it back on – nothing.

We managed to find a spot for almost everything. There was plenty of stuff we threw out, we gave a friend some big packages of ribs and hamburger meat that had started to defrost. There were a few bags of banana peels that I saved to put in the garden; there were bones I had been saving to make bone broth – tossed all that. Of course, the trash man came today so our trash will be ripe by the time he comes next week.

I found a spot for everything but an ice chest full of ground meat that I’ll can tomorrow or Sunday. It’s in a cooler and I doubt it will be defrosted by tomorrow but if it is, I’ll can it. There were two huge briskets in there. One had started to defrost so I took it out, seasoned it and will smoke it tomorrow.

A new freezer has been ordered and will be delivered (supposedly) on July 20. We certainly didn’t expect to be buying a new freezer right now. Good thing we hadn’t planned on going on vacation this year. 🙂