The Kitchen: 5 Kids, No Fridge

This weekend has passed by in a blur as I spent a lot of the time trying to figure out how to operate without our fridge.  On Friday night it was making some strange noises and then I realized there was a puddle below the freezer.  We hardly use the freezer, but what was in it had melted completely and our fridge was no longer feeling cold either.  Things like this always happen on the weekend when it is impossible to get help.

I am thankful for family down the road and they have some extra fridge space.  Right now my slow cooker stew is in their fridge as I write.  Some might be thinking, who cares about a fridge just order a pizza or something.  Let's just say we are not all able to do that.  Getting restaurant food for all of us is just not that easy right now. 

By Friday a lot of our food is eaten as I plan to shop Saturday nights or Sundays.  We had a turkey breast to roast and some vegetables, some milk, a few eggs, and the fact that I can list everything by memory proves how empty the fridge was.  Food rotting has not really been a problem.  The main problem is picturing a week with multiple trips to the store.  I barely feel like grocery shopping once a week, but now we might need to go every other day until we fix this problem.  All of our leftovers are being stored 3 miles down the road and let's face it, I am feeling a bit frustrated.

I went on my usual Sunday shopping trip today and thought mostly about dried foods.  We will have pasta tomorrow, but if we want meat, we will have to get it before dinner.  Our fridge space is a decent sized cooler, but it does not really hold that much.  Last night when I knew we had half a turkey breast to preserve, I decided to throw it and some beans into a slow cooker for 12 hours so that I would not have to go to my parents house until it was time to go to church. 

Planning meals has been a part of life at this point, but now we are scheduling how to keep our food, when to pick it up, and what we should not have around without a fridge.  I never thought about how nice it was to just place things in the fridge before.  It is so nice to have modern machines.