Years ago we bought a small upright freezer. The reasoning was that the hubs didn't want to find me as a popsicle in a chest-type freezer some day when I fell in trying to get something out of the bottom!
I'm not that klutzy, just short . . . with little arms that can't reach anything.
Since I'm too lazy to go into the garage and take a picture, I just swiped this picture off the internet and this freezer looks amazingly like mine. Height-wise, it's slightly less than five feet high.
So, anyway, it's not a self-defrosting freezer and it needs to be defrosted every couple of years. I've been planning to do it for awhile, but I chose the day of my dentist visit to do this.
Partly because I had numb face, numb tongue, numb everything. I couldn't eat. I couldn't drink. And I certainly couldn't show my face in public!
So I turned off and unplugged the freezer, emptied the freezer items into some ice chests, got out the heat gun and went to town. . . oh, it helped that I put a baking dish under the front of the freezer to catch most of the melting ice.
About an hour later, it was frost-free, clean and dry.
I chilled it down before I started packing the stuff back in.
The most unusual product: rib bones--Oklahoma summer, remember? I don't put anything in the trash that will stink. If it won't go down the disposal, it goes in a freezer bag until the next trash day. . . but many trash days have gone by since we ate ribs. Put note on freezer door to remind myself for next trash day.
Found: Lentil soup, and homemade enchilada sauce.
Candy making stuff: the entire bottom shelf is loaded with Ghirardelli chocolate for fillings, caramels, and about 26 flavors of truffle fillings, caramels, and stuff.
Some of it is still good, while I need to make more of some flavors: Kahlua, Buttershots, Black Forest, Chambord, and Barenjager just to name a few.
Some of it, I'll probably trash: bananas foster caramel (didn't translate well), berry caramel (too buttery), maple walnut (too grainy), cherries jubilee (weird oily taste). If you want to know the flavors that I will probably be making then go here, and scroll down past the afghan.
I'm starting to get excited about candy season, and these failures give me a chance to play with new flavors . . .
Later, Peeps! I'm going to order some supplies and candy boxes and get to work!
