Countdown

We only have a little over a week to go before we close this house for the summer.

One of the main things we do each season is to try to "eat out" the freezer, refrigerator, and pantry.  Our progress on that front was marked by two events today.  First, I was able to move what remaining food I had stored in the large freezer in the garage into the smaller freezer in the refrigerator.  We probably have five or six meals left to make, but that should work well for us this week.

Defrosting the garage freezer was not as difficult as I imagined.  The ice melted quickly, and since we have not owned the freezer for the entire winter, the puddles in the bottom were easy to wick up with an old towel.  We actually went to the fabric store to see if we could buy some inexpensive material to drape over the top while we are gone.  We want to leave it open so air circulates through it, but we don't want the inside to be full of dirt when we come back in the fall.  Sadly, we learned that even "inexpensive" material is not that cheap.  I need about 2 yards, and the most suitable fabric would have cost me about $12.00.  Rick said, "Heck.  We can go to Wal-Mart and buy a cotton twin-sized sheet set for $8.00."  We were on our way to do just that when I remembered that we had some old bamboo sheets that had shrunk to the point of not fitting on a queen-sized mattress any more.  Those will work well; thus, home we came.

Our next task was to bundle up any non-perishable food that we did not want to eat now or to keep until next fall. One pudding mix hit the trash can when I discovered a "best by" date of April 11 of this year.  We did, however, have three bottles of juice and a small assortment of canned goods that were still good.

Earlier we had donated four cases of juice to Dunedin Cares, a local food pantry run by volunteers in our neighborhood at Faith Lutheran Church.  We took the bag of juices and canned goods to them this morning, and they were delighted to get our donation.  We noted that all of the juice we had donated earlier was gone. One of the volunteers told us that the juice went "real fast." I cringed at the grammar but was delighted that others wanted what we had donated.  

I learned later that food drop off  for Dunedin Cares was supposed to occur on Monday and Wednesday mornings rather than today, but no one else was there, and the volunteers were happy to take our food for their shelves.  We both hate to waste anything, so we felt good in being able to donate food for the benefit of those who need help.  We'll make sure that we do this each year before we leave for the summer.

Each day we try to pack a little more or to finish one more task on our "to do" list.  We saw yesterday that the morning temperature in Wisconsin was only 39, so I really have mixed feelings going back to those temperatures.  We hope now that the temperatures continue to rise, and that we do not have to drive through dangerous weather as we dive to our northern home.