Freezer: 1 DeWolfes: 0

The first word in this post’s title should be read with implied air quotes.

Last night, before dinner, I reached into the fridge-freezer to pull out some shrimp for dinner — our meal plan called for seafood pasta — but the first bag of food I grabbed to move out of the way was not frozen. Neither was the next one.

Frack.

Except I didn’t say “Frack.” I cursed a couple of times, loud enough that Kiddo came running up to see what was what. I told her to go assess what room was in the chest freezer (really, we are at capacity right now, just because of the time of year) and told her the box of Freezies could come out, regardless (they aren’t real food and we needed that space for real food).

She was amazingly helpful as I took out virtually all the fruit and prepped a fruit sauce (strawberry/blackberry) and fruit crumble (apple/blueberry) and threw out the bananas which had thawed into a brownish syrup. One package of blueberries, one cranberries and one of blackberries were largely salvageable — they went into the chest freezer.

Other food came out to be dinner (seafood pasta, dropped off the meal plan) as “freezer surprise” — bacon cheeseburgers and hashbrowns with a side of corn — a friend dropped by so she helped us eat. Still more food was cooked last night so we could eat it for lunch today. PHEW.

Checking the temperature before bed las night, it seemed to have dropped again so we thought maybe it was OK and just needed to have more room for air to circulate (worst hit areas were the top and bottom shelves).

This morning, we checked the temperature again and stuff that had been frozen last night was now thawed. Sigh. More freezer surprise for breakfast netted us perogies with bacon (and eggs). We emptied most of the ice out of the hopper and turned off the ice maker then re-set the fridge and freezer — something we should have done last night.

After lunch (the dim sum we cooked last night) we assessed the freezer again and had to concede, amid ice melting and thawed food that the freezer was no longer working as a freezer. I moved most of what I could recover, threw out more leftovers, and earmarked more veggies for dinner — cauliflower, leeks, and peas? sounds like we’re having curry! (it went well with the peanut-tofu that was on the meal plan.) A bag full of burritos now thawed, was donated to Mike’s Mom.

I also started window shopping online because I kind of presume the rest of the fridge will soon follow. One key thing we’d like is a narrower fridge — our current fridge is wedged in place and even an inch narrower would be a huge difference. Our current fridge also has an external water and ice dispenser but it looks like that will add close to $1000 to the price tag. I think for $1K, I can put water in trays to freeze and start using either tap water or the bottled water we pay for so that we have big jugs of water in case of emergency. I found a Kenmore model I really like but we will be sure to shop around. Soon.