Starting Over

For Christmas my mother received a food saver and she planned to share it with me (and store it at my house, you now because I have a nice large basement!).  I knew the first thing I wanted to try in it; taco meat!  I love Mexican dishes and I especially love cheap, whole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurants.  Taco Villa, Tortilla Jacks and Taco Casa are my favorites (in that order).  Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, none are on my way home or in my neighborhood.  

Earlier this month my kind parents bought and brought over 3 or 4 lbs of ground beef from Herman’s Meat Market to fry up.  Mom got busy frying all of it while I worked to put away $168 with of purchases from Sam’s club (twice annual sale on tp, Kleenex, laundry detergent, etc) and my father read the instructions on the food saver.  While down in the basement I asked my father if I he’d help me move the power cord for my freezer to another outlet that wasn’t being used.  The outlets are over my head and he kindly moved it.  Back upstairs we seasoned the browned ground beef with Williams Chili Seasoning, which I use in place of taco seasoning, measured out 2 cups of meat and sealed several portions using the food saver. I was set to quickly throw together tacos, enchiladas, sanchos, nachos or even chili when the mood set it.  I threw them down in the basement freezer and forgot about them. 

 

 

Fast forward ten days.  6:20 am on Tuesday, I ran down the stairs to grab a Lean Cuisine TV Dinner to have for lunch that day.  I had ten of them, neatly stacked in a plastic bin.  I was looking for the just the right Tuesday lunch day flavor when I realized they were all soft.  ?!?  Um, I squeezed em.  They were room temp!  Thawed!  Along with everything else in the freezer!  I glanced down and saw what was once a beautiful roast, but was now an ugly colored roast.  Bread dough had thawed and risen in its package looking like a nice soft pillow.  Oh No!  The entire contents of my FULL freezer; thawed!  I’ll have to call in and cook everything then I can refreeze it all.  No.  It was past that point.  

Was the door opened?  I don’t think so.  Had it come unplugged?  No, the light was on when I opened the door.  Was the freezer, which was bought after I moved in, broken?  It ran when I opened the door.  What happened?  I shed a few tears, called my parents waking them before they're normally up, shared the news and went onto work.  

 

My father visited that day and tested the outlet and the freezer.  Nothing wrong that he could find. 

 

He left, got home and while thinking of it, returned to test an idea he had.  His test proved accurate.  The outlet we moved the freezer to runs only when the basement lights are on.  I don’t leave them on and I don’t frequently go down there, so more or less the freezer had been off for ten entire days.  I contribute the lack of smell to the fact that the freezer was full and the basement is cool.  

Of course, my trash had already been picked up. So, I unloaded and lugged up the contents of the freezer in trash bags that my father took to dispose at his house the next day when they’re trash was picked up. 

Look all this beautiful ground beef! 

 

 

Amd roasts, pork loin and chicken, some of which was my mothers. 

There was more. It really was full.  

So, now I start over.  Its sad and frustrating, but in the grand scheme of things its life.  It isn’t cancer, as my coworker has.  My entire house wasn’t flooded, as I know some in Louisiana experienced last year.  My house isn’t being swept away by flood waters or lost in a tornado or fire.  It stinks, but lesson learned.