Modern refrigeration as we know it is one of the most critical
inventions in the last century because they improve your access to safe food
supplies. Fayetteville is known as a food desert* and when one is without
refrigeration this fact is exacerbated to a potentially intolerable level. About
two weeks before Christmas my refrigerator decided to die on me. I knew
something was wrong when I opened the freezer to find all of 2016’s frozen
harvest defrosted completely. Since I did not know how long it had been that
way unfortunately there was no good reason to try and salvage most of it. Once
I did notice that there was a problem, the first task was to verify that the
refrigerator was actually broken. I raised the cooling settings to maximum and
then placed a thermal sensor in the freezer and the refrigerator section and
afterwards checked them every hour for six hours. When you change the settings
of a refrigerator it takes 24 hours for the settings to take effect so six
hours was a good time frame to estimate the refrigerator’s functionality. At
the end of six hours the fridge was cool at about 50 degrees and the freezer
was at roughly 48-49 degrees; the normal temperature should have been 32-40 for
the refrigerator and 30-32 degrees for the freezer. While looking for the unit
specifications I found that the refrigerator was made in 2014, and thus it had
depreciated enough that repair would cost more than replacing the unit. The
next step was to clear the refrigerator of anything that posed a health threat
via spoilage or contamination. Nothing in the freezer was salvageable so
everything that was not packed in oil went out to the compost pile, you could
say that the decomposers in the pile got big Christmas present this year.
The process was repeated for the refrigerator section though a lot of
things in the refrigerator were just fine at 40-50 degrees. A good example of
things that did not need to be thrown out would be your basic condiments. For
example, mustard, soy sauce, siracha, non-sweet salad dressings, and anything
that is acidic such as pickles were relatively save in the short term. Eggs,
butter and, cheese were also alright because they could withstand a wider
temperature range than milk, yogurt, cut fruit and vegetables and fruit juices
which had to go in the cooler. Meat products were handled cautiously because at
45 degrees it would not take long for food-borne microbes make them hazardous.
Any meant brought in had to be cooked the day purchase and consumed within 48
hours. I found that it takes a 20lb bag of ice to effectively cool an 18 cubic
foot capacity refrigerator per two days.
The trick was to use plastic containers to spread the ice around and ½
to ¼ fill the vegetable crispers full of ice. This kept the refrigerator at
around 43-46 degrees which reduced any further losses of food. I also used a 48
quart cooler with 10 pounds of ice to super-chill what absolutely needed to be
cold**. It was a good thing the refrigerator failed during winter because if it
had it done so during summer it might have been impossible to keep anything
cold. So life settled in to a pattern, every two days or so I would go out on
an ice-run, and while there I would buy the fresh foods needed to make two
days’ worth of meals. It briefly became a normal aspect of life that everything
had to be cooked fresh every second day. This was made possible by taking
normal recipes with the amount of ingredients reduced by half. The half-scale
style of fresh cooking meant that I made twice as many trips for food but the
cost of food remained the same overall.
The biggest lesson learned was that it is very possible to have a fresh
and organic food diet that was nearly vegetarian without the presumed big price
tag. It took some planning to have a menu that would not get boring; my diet
varied a bit for two weeks with the following selections; Kale-bean soup,
Grilled vegetables with basmati rice, Tuscan Stew, Sautéed yellow squash with
sweet onions, traditional hearty stew, Broccoli Rabe with fresh garlic over
penne pasta, Steamed broccoli served with Turkey drumsticks and basmati rice
and a rich mushroom gravy. I will admit the aforementioned list is just dinner,
I kept lunch and breakfast limited to one-off dishes that were made and
consumed on the same day. The point is that you can eat fresh, but creativity
is critical to a reasonable fresh diet, and that starts with you determining
what you do and do not have a taste for.
*The USDA has a food desert locator; https://www.fns.usda.gov/tags/food-desert-locator
** Things such as cut vegetables & fruit, milk, dairy products, and
fruit juices, opened jams and jellies and, meat should be stored in the cooler.
