I’m almost always planning ahead and don’t usually screw up as bad as I did this evening. I was so tired from working in the garden at least five hours, cooking, baking bread . . we finished dinner and I told Vince . . “I’ll get the dishwasher loaded and going but I’m honestly too tired to wash the pots and get everything cleaned up nice and neat. After I sit for a while, I may be able to come back upstairs and work but there’s a good chance, it’s going to have to stay like this tonight.” He understood. He’s been working outside and he’s tired too.
Back up a few days . . we were in Aldi Thursday and big, nice avocados were on sale for .49 each. Vince said he would pick out some. He did . . 20 of them. I was a bit frustrated because all he has to do is put them in the bag and I’m left to figure out what to do with them and do it. They weren’t quite ready to use yet so when we got home, I put them all in a clothes basket and put them next to the breakfast room table so I would see them . . front and center . . and not find them all shriveled up and needing to be thrown away.
As soon as I finished telling Vince how tired I was, I looked down and said “those darned avocados are probably ripe!” Vince said ‘Can they wait til morning?” and I said “They’re going to have to. I simply cannot do one more thing today.” Then, I got up and felt them. No, they needed to be done. The kitchen has been warm and they were at their perfect spot.
I grabbed a big bowl. Vince brought the kitchen trash can next to the table so I could sit and peel and mash them. I did and added lime juice.
That didn’t take too long. I took the bowl and big spoon downstairs, went into the room where the freeze dryer and all the necessary tools reside and . . where were the empty trays? I have two sets of four. There’s one set in the freeze dryer and I had not even thought about the chicken pot pie, chicken and pie crust being in the freezer on the four extra trays. It was easy enough to take the cooked chicken, which was kinda in separate pieces, and the pie crust, which was in strips, and put those in a bag in the freezer. That gave me the two empty trays.
It was too much for two trays. There’s a weight limit, as well as a height limit for what we should load onto the trays but I didn’t have much choice. I stuck those two trays in the freezer and was thinking maybe I would run those two trays, with the two trays of pot pie mix, then when the freeze dryer says it’s done, take the two pot pie mix trays out, put the tray of crust and the tray of chicken in the freeze dryer and run those and the two trays of avocado, which would mean the avocado went through twice.
The load that’s in the freeze dryer now should be done by early afternoon tomorrow. Maybe I could leave the avocado in the fridge that long, then take part of it off each try and fill a third tray with avocado.
I sat down and said “NO!” This has to be done right. Remember, I’m very tired and my feet are aching. I ran upstairs and got a metal spatula and tried to get one of the liners and pot pie mix out of the tray. Nope, couldn’t do it. I saw a spot on a corner where I might could get a butter knife under it so I ran back upstairs, grabbed a butter knife, came back and the liner and contents popped right out so I was able to almost fit that hunk into a 2 gallon ziplock bag, wrapped it all in heavy duty foil and stuck it in the freezer. Then I took part of the avocado from each tray and filled that third tray. Honestly, I think I could have filled four trays but three is going to have to do.
In five years of freeze drying, I’ve never needed a third set of trays. I’m wondering now if I should get a third set or just be more careful about getting too much stacked up and waiting.