Good Freezer - Bad People

Flashback with me - the year was 1994/1995 and we for some reason ( I don't know why, as we only had two kids and didn't buy meat in bulk) decide that we NEED a deep freeze. After shopping around, I looked in the classifieds and saw a stand up freezer for $20. It needed a $15 thermostat, but for $35 we had a nice, big functional freezer.

So, in the last 15 or so years, we have moved the freezer five times and it has never faulted. Over the years, it was often near empty, but now that I have such a big family and buy meat by the 1/2 cow, it is often so full that I can barely cram it all in.

It's been such a good freezer that I'd recommend Montgomery Ward appliances if they hadn't gone out of business years and years ago! So, what's my freezer problem around here? Operator error -you wouldn't think it would so difficult, but it has been a challenge for us this year!

First freezer crises was the night before our big beach vacation to Charleston. At that time, the freezer lived in the barn and I sent Ben out to put something in it. He came back in and told me, "Mom, when I opened the door, the ice-cream fell out and flew all over the place." That statement stuck fear in my heart, as ice-cream really only seems to take flight when it's pretty melted. JD went to access the problem, and sure enough........someone had left the door ajar. So, the night before vacation, JD and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning cooking tons and tons of meat to avoid throwing it all away. I am still blessed with two enormous containers of pre-cooked steaks.

Skip forward to this morning.... I had plans, I had a lot to do. Thankfully, the freezer now resides in my new laundry room, which is more practical and I can keep an eye on the door. I opened it to throw in a huge bad of chocolate chips from Costco, when I realized that it wasn't cold in there. Upon closer examination, I realized that lots and lots in there had already thawed! I checked the plug, I checked the down-stairs circuit breaker; my conclusion was that the old freezer had finally died. I called JD and left a message with the bad news. Then, I had the incredibly unpleasant job of cleaning and cramming as much as I could that wasn't thawed into the upstairs freezers. After that, I started cooking pounds and pounds of thawed meat. I also prepared big trays of steaks that JD will be cooking tonight on the grill.

When I was nearing the end of my hours of handling bloody meat, JD came home early. Upon closer examination, he found out the the upstairs circuit breaker for the generator, that isn't used yet, but is hooked to the down-stairs circuit for the freezer was turned off. Who would have done such a thing? Me, when I flipped the circuit for our AC that is broken and only turns off by flipping the circuit. Oh, Man!

For lunch we had an enormous pile of barbecue ribs; dinner will be steaks galore.


Anyone know any brilliant ideas for pre-cooked and re-frozen steaks? I sure have a lot of them!