We Were Cold. The Food, not so much

Winnie The Pooh and
The Blustery Day [VHS]

"Finally the blustery day turned into a blustery night.  To Pooh, it was an uncomfortable night full of uncomfortable noises..."  
A.A. Milne, retold in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, included on the DVD, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Saturday night I knew how Pooh felt!

We had quite the major wind storm this weekend, which resulted in 2 downed lines in our neighborhood alone, and tens of thousands of outages in major areas of Western Washington.  Our power outage started Saturday evening and ended sometime early this morning...4:30 is my best estimate... so about 32 hours.  

Because I went to my dad's yesterday, it didn't occur to me to advise those at home to do a food rescue of the things in the fridge.  If it had, I wouldn't have just put approximately 100 pounds of food stuffs in the trash can.  I hate to think of the replacement value of that food, and we'll have to pay a fee for the additional weight and overfull garbage receptacle, to boot!  

Anyway, just as a reminder, foodsafety.gov advises in their article, Refrigerated Food and Power Outages: When to Save and When to Throw Out, that perishables in the refrigerator be evaluated and discarded, as their list specifies, after an outage that lasts 4 hours or longer.  The list of things to discard, of course, is longer than those to keep.  It's ok to keep vinegar-based condiments and dressings, uncut fruit and veggies, hard cheeses (as long as it's not shredded), fruit juice, butter, peanut butter and jellies, and bread (which shouldn't be in the fridge anyway!).  All meats, processed meats, casseroles and soups, cooked pasta, cooked veggies, pre-washed and cut, packaged veggies and salads, cream based dressings, all eggs, and all dairy and milks had to go.  Please visit the page for more specifics.

This isn't the post I'd planned for today, so I'll get back on track tomorrow.  Right now I have to make a previously unplanned Costco run to replenish our larders!

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