I will never again . . . (Part 4)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

50 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

I find using a fork can help avoid that result. 

 

The pie laden fork fell off the plate.  That's when the trouble started.

 

A waterproof desk protector is on the way from amazon...

(eG-friendly Amazon.com link)

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I shall never again leave a quiche out overnight.  And if you never hear from me, that's what happened.

 

[Smithy]

I will never again drop off the trailer (Princessmobile) for "a few hours, or overnight" repairs without first emptying the refrigerator and freezer.

 

That was last Tuesday, 6 days ago. On Saturday or Sunday, it occurred to me that the trailer's batteries and/or propane might not be adequate to keeping the refrigerator running. It also occurred to me that my splurge purchases from a really good meat market halfway across the state were still in the Princessmobile's freezer.

 

As soon as work was done today, I went to the repair place to check. Batteries almost dead. Propane gone. Urk.

 

I'm happy to report that everything had thawed but was still plenty cold. 4 ribeye steaks, 4 pork steaks, some flank steak, and some other splurge meats were all fine. Whew.

 

The radishes in the refrigerator were a bit, er, soggy, and I haven't opened the carton of heavy cream to see how it fared, but we'll take that damage over the loss of all that meat!

[MaryIsobel]

55 minutes ago, Smithy said:

I will never again drop off the trailer (Princessmobile) for "a few hours, or overnight" repairs without first emptying the refrigerator and freezer.

 

That was last Tuesday, 6 days ago. On Saturday or Sunday, it occurred to me that the trailer's batteries and/or propane might not be adequate to keeping the refrigerator running. It also occurred to me that my splurge purchases from a really good meat market halfway across the state were still in the Princessmobile's freezer.

 

As soon as work was done today, I went to the repair place to check. Batteries almost dead. Propane gone. Urk.

 

I'm happy to report that everything had thawed but was still plenty cold. 4 ribeye steaks, 4 pork steaks, some flank steak, and some other splurge meats were all fine. Whew.

 

The radishes in the refrigerator were a bit, er, soggy, and I haven't opened the carton of heavy cream to see how it fared, but we'll take that damage over the loss of all that meat!

Brava! Sounds like you dodged that bullet. When I was a kid, our family took a two week vacation and came home to a dead deep freeze full of meat. That smell is permanently imbedded in my brain's nose!

[heidih]

1 hour ago, Smithy said:

I will never again drop off the trailer (Princessmobile) for "a few hours, or overnight" repairs without first emptying the refrigerator and freezer.

 

That was last Tuesday, 6 days ago. On Saturday or Sunday, it occurred to me that the trailer's batteries and/or propane might not be adequate to keeping the refrigerator running. It also occurred to me that my splurge purchases from a really good meat market halfway across the state were still in the Princessmobile's freezer.

 

As soon as work was done today, I went to the repair place to check. Batteries almost dead. Propane gone. Urk.

 

I'm happy to report that everything had thawed but was still plenty cold. 4 ribeye steaks, 4 pork steaks, some flank steak, and some other splurge meats were all fine. Whew.

 

The radishes in the refrigerator were a bit, er, soggy, and I haven't opened the carton of heavy cream to see how it fared, but we'll take that damage over the loss of all that meat!

Bht if the meat all thawed - now what? Re-freeze? I thought that was questionable idea.

[Smithy]

8 hours ago, heidih said:

Bht if the meat all thawed - now what? Re-freeze? I thought that was questionable idea.

 

Some of it we're cooking tonight. The rest is already back in a deep freeze. As I understand it the texture may suffer from refreezing. As for food safety, I think it'll be okay: assume any bacterial growth happened at refrigerator temperatures rather than freezer temperatures. Cook it sooner rather than later, cook it thoroughly. No tartare from this batch! 

[lindag]

9 hours ago, MaryIsobel said:

Brava! Sounds like you dodged that bullet. When I was a kid, our family took a two week vacation and came home to a dead deep freeze full of meat. That smell is permanently imbedded in my brain's nose!

Yes.  I do know that smell!

[Darienne]

There's that trick everyone should know when leaving home...put a coin on top of a frozen cup of water into the freezer and when you return, you'll know if your freezer lost power and regained it, thus jeopardizing your food supply.  https://www.google.com/search?q=put+a+coin+in+the+freezer&rlz=1C1CHBD_enCA727CA728&oq=puyt+a+coin&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i13i512l4j46i13i512j0i13i512j0i13i30l2j0i13i15i30.7901j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_66QJZZOxBqaZ0PEPzJeZ2AQ_30

 

During last year's Durecho, we had power from our old generator (now replaced by a stand-by generator which cost more money than ...), we were able to store both our meat and that belonging to our neighbors who had no generator.  That loss of power was 7 days for them and they eat higher on the scale than we do.  

[blue_dolphin]

1 hour ago, Darienne said:

There's that trick everyone should know when leaving home...put a coin on top of a frozen cup of water into the freezer and when you return, you'll know if your freezer lost power and regained it, thus jeopardizing your food supply.

 

I've heard of that trick but it does require advance planning unless you always keep cups of frozen water at the ready. I usually resort to inspecting the ice cubes. I suppose those of you with multiple freezers scattered about might not have ice cubes in all of them.  I've only ever had the one attached to the fridge. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Another method:  my freezer needs to be manually restarted.  Thus it is easy to tell if it has lost power.

 

[MaryIsobel]

I will never again attempt to grate a garlic clove on my brand-new-out-of the-box microplane without using my cutproof glove. Gochujang meatballs with knuckle meat anyone? I was grating into the saucepan with all the other ingredients, it is just for family and the sauce boils for 5 minutes so not about to throw it all out. The knuckle scraping was nothing that a bandaid couldn't fix.

[BeeZee]

On 9/19/2023 at 5:04 PM, MaryIsobel said:

I will never again attempt to grate a garlic clove on my brand-new-out-of the-box microplane without using my cutproof glove. Gochujang meatballs with knuckle meat anyone? I was grating into the saucepan with all the other ingredients, it is just for family and the sauce boils for 5 minutes so not about to throw it all out. The knuckle scraping was nothing that a bandaid couldn't fix.

I usually find one fingernail suspiciously flatter after doing that. Collagen anyone?

[heidih]

It got suddenly shockingly cold yesterday late afternoon. Closed doors/windows. Pulled blanket from back of my chair like a cape around my shoulders. Went to kitchen to check on my chard/shrimp/pasta dish. Fringe of "cape" caught on fire. Blue/yellow flame? I stupidly stared in fascination, finally got self over to sink and doused it. I was so cold I never took blanket off and had neice cut the burned part off. My food was great, but the burned material smell! Odd how fire can tranfix you.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I shall never again run out of sugar when making my monthly batch of orgeat.

 

[MaryIsobel]

I always think that I have sugar, flour, salt  and butter but now and again I don't.

[BeeZee]

I will never again cook a spaghetti squash, whole, in the microwave (yes, I poked many holes into it on all sides)

 

[haresfur]

I really tried not to laugh, sorry.

[DesertTinker]

7 hours ago, BeeZee said:

I will never again cook a spaghetti squash, whole, in the microwave (yes, I poked many holes into it on all sides)

 

On the bright side, it’s certainly easier to clean up than something fatty and protein based. Did you hear the explosion?

[Senior Sea Kayaker]

I couldn't help laughing at this because it brings to mind an incident.

Christmas Day 2019: I went over to my brother's house early for that evening's turkey dinner. He was cooking the turkey in a counter top rotisserie oven. It was just the two of us as his wife was out and the rest of the family was scheduled to arrive later.

We were watching some Jim Gaffigan and Sebastian Maniscalco stand up when there was this BANG from the kitchen. We looked at each other with a 'what was that' expression and we went to investigate.

The look on my brother's face when he opened the oven door was priceless. He had stuffed and trussed the turkey to roast and had trussed it so tightly that the steam from the cavity couldn't escape and finally blew out through both ends of the bird and covered the interior of the oven with stuffing. The bird went in the regular oven to finish but was pretty sad looking.

My niece had the best reaction when she arrived 'Dad! What happened to the turkey?'.

As you can imagine my brother has never lived this down and the story is retold and retold.

 

[BeeZee]

7 hours ago, DesertTinker said:

On the bright side, it’s certainly easier to clean up than something fatty and protein based. Did you hear the explosion?

Oh, yes, I knew exactly what it was when I heard it, I was in an adjacent room. Definitely not bad to clean up compared to other things, and my microwave is now “spotless”🤣.

[Alex]

Speaking of microwaves and explosions, maybe a decade ago, maybe more, I was sterilizing a kitchen sponge (this one, or one very much like it) in the microwave* when, in a misguided attempt to get it completely dry, I zapped it for significantly more than the recommended two minutes. It didn't explode, but it did catch on fire. I was not amused.

 

*info

[Smithy]

When my parents got their first microwave oven, my father hosted two of my college friends on an overnight stop while Mom and I were away. For breakfast, before he took them to their backpacking starting point, he cooked eggs. In the microwave. There were 2 eggs in the house. At the time he (and the rest of us) knew nothing about the hazards of microwaving an egg with an intact yolk. One exploded in the microwave. There were bits everywhere in the interior. Dad scraped it together to the extent he could, gave it to one of my friends, and gave the intact egg to the other friend. THAT one exploded the instant the fork hit it!

 

The whole thing was so funny that my friends were falling over themselves laughing and telling the story the following week when we saw each other again. I'd already heard it from Dad, because he too laughed about it that evening when I arrived. As he was describing the action, he gestured toward the refrigerator -- and found yet more egg that he'd missed in the cleanup!

[Smithy]

An hour after I posted the above story, I had a small explosion in my own microwave.

 

I will never again use the "melt butter" function twice without stirring between times, even though some of the butter is still solid.

[rotuts]

@Smithy

 

Micro's are purposely tricky.

 

melt using defrost .

 

always cover w a study microwave cover , not a flimsy one 

 

the sturdy cover confines splatter and Super Splatter.

Edited January 7 by rotuts (log)

[Tropicalsenior]

9 minutes ago, Smithy said:

even though some of the butter is still solid.

It's just a habit but I've always cut butter into small chunks before melting it in the microwave. It melts in about half the time and I've never had an explosion yet.