Another reason why I love canning food more so then freezing them now...
I'm sooo annoyed right now, this is the 2nd time this month the chest freezer in the garage has gone off because the GFCI its plugged into tripped. I just got some butter out of there yesterday afternoon and everything was fine so it must have tripped sometime during the night. I went out today to pull out the turkey carcass to make stock and to my horror everything was thawed and mushy, but thankfully still very very cold ( alot still had frost & ice crystals) with a layer of water at the bottom. After it tripped last week ( and I caught it right away) I spent this week emptying ice cubes from our little freezer ice maker as added insurance in case it tripped again. Glad I did. I had to throw away the overripe banananas and cooled cooked spaghetti squash that was on top and the mushiest, but I'm at a loss at what to do with everything else that got sorta thawed in the ice water.
I mashed up all the raspberries and am going to make jam with them tonight, my poor husband had to drive to 3 stores to find pectin since (unknown to me) its a seasonal item they dont always have in stock.
I have 4 gallon zip lock bags full of tomatillos that are still mostly frozen solid and some a bit soft, 6 gallon bags of sliced bell peppers thats still firm but mostly thawed and 2 gallon bags of cubed cantaloupe thats frozen slush.
I'm heartbroken that a summer's worth of peppers and tomatillos might have to be thrown away, I'm not sure how well they'd hold up to being frozen again. I think I can make salsa from the tomatillos if I can go get some cilantro tomorrow, but the bell peppers? Anyone know a good chutney or something that uses ALOT of bell pepper?
UGH! I love our new place but I'm irked that we just had maintenance come out last week and replace the entire wall outlet because the GFCI would not come back on. I'm really afraid that theres something screwy in the wall thats not grounded correctly and thats whats tripping it, the freezer is less then 2 years old and never had a problem with it.
Goes to prove why canning & drying can be so much more reliable then a freezer- you're at the mercy of a $4 plactic outlet to keep your precious goods safe. I just bought about 20 pounds of ground beef for the month to portion out and freeze, looks like I'm going to have to babysit this freezer/GFCI outlet to make sure it doesnt go out again. The tiny freezer above the fridge in our apartment is crammed with kid stuff like (HG) nuggets, GF bread, flours and my beloved Haggan Daaz.
1 comment:
Hi, yes the freezer can be a very unreliable place to store your treasures!
I made the most delicious chutney out of my sweet peppers last year (I mean 2007). This year we didn't get much from the peppers and I miss this chutney. I dont have my exact recipe here, but this one online looks just about the same. http://www.lanierbb.com/recipes/data/1377.html
BTW, you can increase the amount of peppers, just decrease the apple by the same amount. I did and it tasted great!
You can also can that ground beef. If you can it, you can still make hamburgers and such, you just have to add breadcrumbs and egg to make a patty.
And I would can those tomatillos instead of refreezing them, just to be safe. Freezing doesnt actually kill any bacteria, it just slows it down. So everything that started growing during the thaw will still be there. But the pressure cooker will take care of that.
Sorry to hear this happened twice! What a bummer.
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