The Great Freezer Debacle

Also happening the first week of school... our freezer went out. A most unwanted and unfortunate event. To assuage your fears, it is working fine now. Charles used his expert knowledge to unplug it and plug it back in, after which it started running again.

We're not sure at what point it stopped running, but we discovered the thawed contents on Monday evening, the night before school started. We had a couple of quick power blinks on Saturday and Sunday, so maybe one of those tripped it up somehow? Anyway, thankfully the contents of the freezer were still cold even though they were most definitely completely thawed.

We immediately set to work finding room in the fridge for everything we thought we could save. I started making a big batch of chili with a bunch of venison burger and some veggies from the garden. Charles cooked some burgers and sausage on the grill, and then he made a veggie soup with sausage and meatballs added in. It was quite an evening!

Lots of soup that then went back into the freezer

Big pile o' meat

Over the next couple of days my mom and I canned thawed berries as pie filling and she canned the thawed venison steaks while I was at school on Wednesday.

Canning blackberry pie filling

Ten quarts of canned venison

With this multi-day effort, we were able to salvage most of the food. I refroze the corn I had put up over the summer, as well as some bread products. All we really had to throw out were frozen pizzas and some chicken that we didn't feel comfortable chancing. With all this going on it's no wonder we were worn out by Wednesday though!