Also nice: air conditioning and electric fans

[soc_puppet]

You know what's nice? Going for a midnight snack and not having to worry that the simple act of opening and closing the fridge door will release too much precious, precious chilled air, rendering all within unfit to eat.

(I'm willing to trust the cheese, as long as it's not visibly moldy. I'm probably willing to trust the eggs as well; eggs usually do okay for a few days at room temp, though it wouldn't hurt to do a sniff test. The fruits and veggies will be good or bad, and it should be relatively easy to tell by looking. The meat, though, and the milk? I'll be advocating for all of it to be thrown out. Maybe we can keep the leftover brisket and pulled pork that went in the barely-chilled fridge five hours before we got power back, but I'm sure as hell not eating it. Dad can play digestive roulette with that if he wants, but I'm out.)

(I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to approach the freezer. I think it stayed cooler than the fridge; some of the ice trays still had ice, and the ice cream I impulse-bought at the grocery store was still slightly frozen around seven (around three hours pre-Power Return), and there's probably stuff in there that we needed an excuse to toss out anyhow. Other stuff will be more touch-and-go. If we have hotdogs in the freezer, I'm willing to call them thawed and move them to the fridge; the frozen chicken nuggets, on the other hand, have me more indecisive...)

Comments

[alexseanchai]

hard cheeses like cheddar, even if it is visibly moldy, you should be able to just cut those parts off and the rest will be fine. (though if you go "ew, no" and chuck the whole block, I can hardly blame you. bc ew.) soft cheeses like mozzarella, though, if you see mold, not even Plagg wants that. whole block / bag has to go.

it is already too late for the "is this still cold? okay it's fine" test to be of any use for the freezer contents. but since you know some stuff didn't thaw, probably most to all of it is fine. the chicken nuggets I'd toss in the oven and call those dinner, or possibly breakfast, and any meat that was raw when it got frozen I'd cook promptly just on principle.

(my parents have two fridge-freezer units and a whole 'nother freezer, or did last I heard and idk why they'd have got rid of any of those, and have had for years. because possibly my mother has some food insecurity issues, USAF enlisted paychecks ain't never had a whole lot of stretch, and we were a household of seven. I got woken up more than once because a power outage ended at two in the morning and she needed more hands to help sort the freezer into refreezable, cook-first, and trash. also more hands to cook. and then we would be looking for creative ways to use all that now-pre-browned-and-seasoned ground beef for the next month…)

[soc_puppet]

All of our hard cheese is pre-sliced in packages; I'm still probably good to tear off the moldy bits and use the rest (I think my Safety and Sanitation textbook said one inch in from the mold?), but the co-jack at least looked fine last night, so I'm not terribly worried overall.

Turns out Dad had already gone through the freezer when I got upstairs today, which I am not complaining about. This is still quite useful advice for if this happens again, though! Thank you 😊

[alexseanchai]

😺

[which_chick]

Eggs are generally OK if they don't float. A little tip-up on one end is fine. Full-on bobbing suspended in the water is no go. Also, if in doubt and still wanting to use eggs, crack each one by itself into a bowl, inspect, and put into a group container once it's "approved" for use. You will definitely see/smell the offness of eggs.

Freezers generally do ok in power outages as long as the door stays shut. If you checked the freezer right when the power came back on and stuff was still frozen solid, you're good. Freeze-thaw-freeze does tend to adversely affect food quality, though, so if stuff thawed out mostly or all the way, but was STILL COLD, you can probably triage-eat your way through a lot of it.

[soc_puppet]

Thanks for the floater-test info! Turns out all of our eggs are still good to go, as I'd more-or-less suspected. The crack-check is something I've actually been doing for all my life; I've had to teach it to more than a few student interns at the hotel where I work, though for larger recipes I'm usually willing to go up to as many as four eggs in a separate bowl at a time 😜

Turns out Dad already cleaned out the freezer by the time I got upstairs today; I'm not complaining, myself. One less job for me!