Cellar Scribblings

[Jeff Wrangler]

Spring cleaning! How I wish I had the time to lavish on my own living quarters. It looks like I will have two units coming vacant in the next month or two, so I'll likely be doing all those things, except straightening album covers, at my rental spaces. The Wall Street Journal had an article about how people don't clean their refrigerators enough. How they take their fridges for granted until they break. SO, recently, I decided to clean my freezer. A challenge, since it (as usual) was completely full of frozen food, some of it not really recognizable.

I started by getting out a large plastic shopping bag and started emptying the freezer. A few items looked appetizing and were put into the fridge to thaw and eat. A few items were put into the trash, dated several years ago. With the surfaces exposed, I washed them quickly with hot water and a sponge, followed by a baking soda/vinegar solution squirted on and wiped off. I then replaced the frozen food in better order. The whole process took 10 minutes! I'm definitely going to do that more often. Plus, I didn't even have to go grocery shopping for a whole week!

I'm afraid that's certainly the situation with my refrigerator. When I lived in a rental apartment that had an old-ish refrigerator, the refrigerator got cleaned out regularly because it needed to be defrosted periodically. Now that I have a frost-free refrigerator I do, indeed, take it for granted--until I noticed frost building up on the back wall of the freezer compartment and needed to call someone to repair it.

A few items were put into the trash, dated several years ago.

You had stuff in your freezer for several years?    I never buy anything that I don't expect to eat in a reasonable amount of time, and I tend to panic if I have chicken in the freezer for more than a month. I try not to prepare more than I can eat at a meal so I don't have leftovers. It's not that I don't like leftovers, because I do, but when I have them I feel compelled to eat them right away, whether I'm "hungry for them" or not, so I don't end up with them hanging around for months and months.

Right now I'm unhappy that I have about half a dozen Omaha hamburgers in the freezer since Christmas. They came a dozen in a box, and it takes me a while (obviously) to use a dozen hamburgers. These are a bit of a chore to prepare. They have a lot of fat in them (I suppose that's what makes Omaha beef "prime"), so I have to grill them to get out the fat, but then they're so dry I have to soak them in gravy to make them palatable.

[serious crayons]

I try not to prepare more than I can eat at a meal so I don't have leftovers. It's not that I don't like leftovers, because I do, but when I have them I feel compelled to eat them right away, whether I'm "hungry for them" or not, so I don't end up with them hanging around for months and months.

Depending on the dish, if I have enough leftovers, I pop them in the freezer. Then I have a smallish container there ready for quick thawing if I need dinner or lunch in a pinch.

[CellarDweller]

Hiya BetterMost friends.

Oh, sleeping in felt good today! 

Goals for today is to get some stuff at Wal Mart, mail some stuff out, and then get to the refrigerator and freezer.


Ah, the conversation of leftovers.  I also try to eat my leftovers as quickly as possible.  I don't like them hanging around too long.  Usually, if I make something,  I'll take any leftovers to work for lunch the next day.

[serious crayons]

Ah, the conversation of leftovers.  I also try to eat my leftovers as quickly as possible.  I don't like them hanging around too long.  Usually, if I make something,  I'll take any leftovers to work for lunch the next day.

I used to try to make something big, eat it for dinner two nights in a row and take it for lunch on the third day. If there was more than that, I'd put some in the freezer.

But now that my son lives here it's harder to plan. He is capable if eating about twice as much as I do, so a big dish can be demolished pretty quickly. Sometimes I take a lunch portion off the top and hide it in the back of the 'fridge.

[brianr]

As I usually have one big trip a year last at least 6 weeks. I empty and turn off my frig. This year I am just having 2 small trips (today going to Sydney for 2 weeks and in late August going to our capital Wellington for 1 week) so the frig will not get turned off. However as I do very little of my own cooking there are not many leftovers in my rather small freezer compartment. I do stew rhubarb from my garden and put in small containers and when I make up a pan of mince to go with pasta, I make enough for about 3 meals. Otherwise the freezer just has bought meals from supermarket and bread. My main problem is vegetables, which I buy at the farmers market, going off in the crisper. I threw out carrots yesterday and when I went to cook a zucchini on Saturday, it had to be thrown out and I got some frozen cauliflower and broccoli instead. I cleaned my frig before my sister came and visited for my operation at the beginning of March. I guess I will do it again in a few months

[CellarDweller]

Status update for what I accomplished today,  it's crossed off the list.

Wash the curtains, clean the blinds, clean the windows, clean and dust all surfaces,  remove all 'knick-knacks' from shelves and dust/clean the shelves and knick-knacks, clean oven & refrigerator, move furniture to dust and vacuum under and beneath everything, put "carpet fresh" on the carpets and vacuum, scrub out the tub and bathroom, straighten slanted albums hung on wall, get Easter supplies.

[serious crayons]

Do you have to clean the oven by hand? That doesn't sound fun.

I've always had self-cleaning ovens. Or I should say, the only times I've ever cleaned my oven were when I had self-cleaning ovens. It's possible I had others that weren't but it just never occurred to me to clean them. 

[Jeff Wrangler]

Do you have to clean the oven by hand? That doesn't sound fun.

I remember watching my mother do that. 

[Front-Ranger]

When I've used the self-cleaning feature on my oven, it fried the delicate electronics, so I've stuck with hand cleaning since then. I've cleaned many an oven. I'd probably faint if a renter actually cleaned the oven before leaving the place. 

It's not as bad as you might think. You remove any crusty stuff, then spray on the oven cleaner, leave it to do its work, and then wipe it off. If you have nice thick rubber gloves, it's a piece of cake.

[CellarDweller]

Hiya BetterMost friends.

Oh, I'm going to miss sleeping in when I go back to work!

 

Bowling night tonight, before I go there, my plans today are to clean and dust all surfaces,  remove all 'knick-knacks' from shelves and dust/clean the shelves and knick-knacks.  My original plan was to do the bathroom, but then thought that it makes no sense to clean it now, and then use it for the rest of the week, and have to clean it again Saturday for Sunday.  So I'll probably save the bathroom for Saturday.

I'll be getting stuff on Wednesday, so that I have time to put it together, and I'll most likely do the curtains, blinds and windows that day.