Freezers without power

Blessings Darlings!

Lots of folks still without power here on the East Coast.  Word is that in Charles Town WV the Burger King, KFC, FOOD LION, etc have had to throw out all their frozen and refrigerated foods.  That's a heck of a lot of food!

I have full freezers here - both the freezer part of the refrigerator and the free-standing upright 14.7 cubic foot freezer.  What, you ask, would *I* do in an extended power outage during the summer?

FIRST - I'd see if I could get any dry ice.  I know that AirGas in Martinsburg sells it, but don't know their hours and have not tried to see if they are open during this since, well, I don't need the stuff.  Yes, I have emergency cash on hand to pay for that.

SECOND - I'd wrap the freezer in blankets.  I sure don't need them now!  And the freezers being so full they'd last 3 days or more with added insulation.

THIRD - I'd can the freezer contents, using a propane-powered camping stove and a case of propane I keep around JUST in case that.  Frozen fruits would have sugar and spices added and be canned as pie filling in quart jars (I'd add corn starch when making pies later).  Veggies would go in pint or quart jars - and I suppose I might not 'can' them and might make pickles of them instead.  The pickles could be water bath canned if power continues out once they are 'done'.  Boneless meats go in pint jars, bone-in go in quart jars and get pressure canned.  The pork jowl would finally get smoked! The pork shoulder would be smoked, pulled, then canned (maybe in BBQ sauce). 

The chicken livers I don't know WHAT I'd do with.  Probably make rumaki and eat them rather than try to preserve them further.

Obviously, if we had any ice cream we'd have eaten that early on.

And, of course, we DO have a generator, but in an emergency I might use that only to pump water rather than run the freezer.

Look, it's not like I've got a freezer full of microwaveable dinners or other majorly prepared foods.  It's full of 'ingredients' rather than food, as Sharon Astyk might put it.  That means that I can MAKE the raw ingredients INTO food and preserve the food. 

Zucchini Experimentation

Blessings, Darlings! Since my garden is producing an over abundance of zucchini/marrows/courgettes this summer, and my kirby cucumbers died, last night I tried making spicy half sour pickles out of the zucchini. For a NORMAL batch, you put the sliced cucumbers in the brine, leave them out 2 days, and they are done. This being a Laboratory Experiment .... I refrigerated them immediately instead of leaving them out. And I just tested them, about 13 hours after the pickling started. They are done. Really really done. So done that I've just replaced half of the brine with water. For some reason they are a bit bitter, but the texture is great as is the level of sourness. Perhaps the zucchinis I used were a bit too old for this? BTW, the stink bug collection experiment continues, but we've been having lots of overnight rain and I think that inhibits their travels. Or this technique is just good for indoors/attics. Or the technique fails. As the damn bugs move inside I'll try it in the basement and see what happens, but I'll keep trying it as a garden pest treatment until the garden is done. Frondly, Fern