Dry Ice

I'm at my happiest when the pantry and the fridge are packed full of food and drink. My Mom tells me that even as a little girl I wouldn't leave the house without a baggie full of cheerios. I know it might sound hopelessly middle-class fifties housewife but it's just the way I am. I get nervous and edgy when our supplies dwindle. I find myself counting how many varieties of cheese are left (serious cheese addiction), how many boxes of empty cereal are stuffed back in the cupboard (teenage daughter), and how low on Le Croix carbonated lime water we really are (for some reason only fizzy water quenches my thirst.) There are various other things I feel that I can't live without as well but I'll spare you the details.

Last week my husband and I tackled a landscaping project involving large quantities of topsoil, mulch, tropical trees, blood, sweat and tears. I then proceeded to fall ill with a nasty little virus that stole my lovely appetite and any energy I still had left from our yard work. So on Friday morning, feeling slightly better than train-wrecked, I inspected our food stores. In a panic equitable to a junkie down to her last hit I realized we were out of just about everything, and nary a fizzy water in sight. Parched and pale I raced off to the grocery store where I proceeded to spend an obscene amount of money on food and drinks. Really though, we were out of everything!

When I returned there was a strange electrical smell in the house. I tried to pinpoint its origin but my sniffer was out of whack from my cold. Everything seemed to be in order and nothing was on fire so I put all the food away and even managed to clean the house. The next morning my daughter complained that her milk was warm. That's when I realized the refrigerator and the freezer weren't working. I now had the origin of the smell. In a panic once again I finally found a repairman willing to come out on a Saturday. He reeked of cigarettes and spoke in a muttering monotone even when nobody was in the kitchen with him, but he was my savior. Or he was until he told me that he couldn't fix my fridge. He told me that the compressor was blown and since it was still under the warrantee of a Company Who Shall Remain Nameless that they would have to replace it.

Of course the "nameless" company's repairperson couldn't get here until Tuesday. I asked the woman on the phone if she could pull some sort of "emergency" authority and get them out here sooner. She replied that the only way she could do that would be if I was deathly ill or some such scenario and my medication had to be refrigerated. I asked her if she thought that losing a couple hundred bucks worth of groceries was an emergency. My voice must been slightly elevated because she responded in the falsely patient tone you use with dogs and insane people who are frothing at the mouth. She had zero sympathy for my dilemma. She was obviously an anorexic or a bulimic and probably would have seen it as a golden opportunity to eat the contents of the fridge and vomit them up again. But I digress.

To top off their incompetence I was passed off to another stoolie to make an appointment. He informed me that while the part was under warrantee we still had to "purchase" the labor. He said it would run us about three hundred bucks. However we could purchase a one year warrantee now for two hundred bucks. Luckily before I could hurl insults about his mother and her morals I remembered that we still had a home warrantee from when we bought the house last summer. I called them and they were much nicer to me and told me that we didn't have to pay any money for anything. I supposed I'm predisposed to think that people who tell me things like that are nicer than others. So they took care of the details but we still had to wait until Tuesday for someone to come to the house.

The smoke addled repair man had told us that dry ice would keep the fridge cool enough so my husband bought a few blocks and some regular ice for the cooler. It worked pretty well but sadly there were some casualties. Less than expected, but still a stunning loss. Perhaps I should have cooked up the meat in the freezer and made soup of various leftovers, but as much as I love to eat I don't think the three of us could consume that amount and live to tell about it. After a couple of days I had to throw away the vast majority of previously frozen and now flaccid food. With a heavy heart I threw away a container of Bolognese sauce (lovingly simmered for hours), leftover seafood enchiladas (welcome home dinner for hubby), bags of frozen shrimp (our favorite staple), turkey stock from Thanksgiving (our first one home in years), a couple of disturbing looking turkey sausages and a couple of freezer burned pork ribs that I'd been meaning to throw away anyway.

I stopped at the two large bags of strawberries that my daughter and I had picked last summer. They were completely melted and I knew I couldn't refreeze them. I decided that it was a good time to experiment a little bit beyond your basic strawberry jam. I made a fruity sauce of the berries by adding red wine, balsamic vinegar, a little sugar and salt and a couple of sprigs of rosemary. I cooked it down for a couple of hours until it was quite thick and then I strained it. I salivated as I mentally tasted it with a juicy filet mignon or rib eye steak. My daughter whined and asked why I didn't make something "good" out of the berries, like jam or ice cream. I took a piece of leftover steak, dipped it in the sauce and popped it in her mouth. She quit complaining.

This morning the Nameless Company Man showed up and after a brief check of the fridge proceeded to tell me that the fridge needed a new compressor. Um, didn't I tell them that already? I suppose that repairmen from other companies that aren't Nameless don't count. So now we have to wait for the part to get here, supposedly in two days. We'll see. Meanwhile I've calmed down about the food supply and the dry ice is doing its job, although it has to be replaced every day. I did get a good sauce out of the whole ordeal and we all learned a little more about the dangers and wonders of dry ice. As long as we have a cooler to chill down the fizzy water and white wine, and a cool place to store my beloved cheeses and milk for my daughter's cereal, we'll be ok. Like my husband said, we've survived a lot worse. Lots of people have. Although I'm not sure how many Nameless repairmen have survived suburban housewives with a surly attitude towards mind-numbing bureaucracy.