Cooking marathon!

I know you've missed these, haven't you? Of course you have!

So, this past week has been a bit of a nightmare. On Monday, my husband said, "It seems like the fridge isn't getting things as cold as they should be." I just shrugged; it's hard to say, especially when the thing is opened about a million times a day, and it's not like our five year old hasn't ever left it cracked open.

By the next day, though, it was apparent that things were getting quite warm.

I should also mention at this point that I live in an apartment in Southern California. In SoCal, fridges are not provided with apartments. I don't know why. It's totally stupid. But it's just how it is. So when we moved to California from Chicago, the first thing we had to do was buy a fridge. Our good friends recommended a used appliance store in Burbank called Savon Appliances, so we went there, picked out a model, and it was delivered the same day. Great place, great people, great service. That was nearly two years ago, and it was an older model fridge, so we weren't really that surprised.

I plugged in my nifty digital thermometer and dangled it off a shelf in the fridge. It registered at 50 degrees. My husband called the local used appliance shop where we got it to see if they did repairs. They did, but they didn't have anyone until Friday. We resolved to wait.

Despite taking care not to open it too much, by the end of the day it was hovering at about 59 degrees. Not good. Not good AT ALL.

On Wednesday I took my probiotics to work and stuck them in the fridge, hoping for the best. I had a bottle of yogurt starter and a bottle of S. Boulardii that I hadn't even opened yet. We started throwing things out Wednesday night, and we also cooked the rest of the thawed chicken parts in the fridge. We then scrambled four dozen eggs, partitioned them out (six eggs to a baggie) and froze those too.

I made my son's egg bread and froze it. To my surprise, it freezes beautifully. It doesn't even stick together. Cool. Also, very thankfully, the legal jello was still setting up in the refrigerator for some reason. We were at the tail end of a jug of Welch's grape juice so that wasn't a big disaster.

We ended up pitching a lot of hubby's condiments, one extremely expensive dose of Enbrel, some veggies, and about three pounds of butter. I kept cooking hamburger patties and chicken breasts in the oven, and I returned them to the freezer once they cooled down. I prepared veggies every night instead of a few days in advance so my son would have some for his lunches.

Bottom line, we survived, and when the repairman came by to tell us it would be $100 to fix the fridge, we figured it would just be better to put the money toward a new used fridge. The service call was $40 but he told us it could be applied to getting another fridge if we came into the store.

Friday night, we went to Savon and picked out a new fridge. I of course drooled my way around the appliance store. It's so funny how SCD changes your view of cooking and kitchens. We settled on an absolutely fabulous GE fridge that looked as if it hadn't been used. It did have a couple of biggish dents and scratches in it, but inside, the drawers were pristine with protective plastic across the fronts.

It was bigger than our old fridge, definitely. It's about three inches taller, too. But the DOOR. MY GOD THE DOOR PEOPLE.


OMG, look at all the CRAP you can FIT in THERE!!! (Obviously this is mostly hubby stuff in the door)

It is so great.

So! The fridge was delivered Saturday at 10 a.m., and Sunday we went food shopping. I first went alone to Albertson's, brought all of that home, and then we all went to Costco. We filled up the fridge quite well, thank you, and then it was time for COOKING MARATHON!

First I threw a few pounds of pineapple spears in the oven, covered. I cut a four pound butternut squash in half and put it in an 8" square Pyrex pan. Then I started a pan of turkey soup with wings and drummettes, and I also started a pan of ketchup.

Since the pineapple and squash had to cook for two hours, I thought I might be able to fit something else in there for an hour if I hurried. I decided to make two one-pound meatloaves with spinach. That took a little while, because I had to cook the spinach, let it cool a little, squeeze out the water, then mix up the meatloaves. I put those in next to the squash.

That was phase one, and after that I got to eat and relax for the next hour.

I then took out the pineapple, checked the squash (it needed another 30 minutes), and removed the meatloaf. The ketchup was done too, so I turned it off and let it cool for the next 30 minutes.

I checked on my soup, and added green beans. Yum! I also realized in order to make egg bread for Clark's lunch, I was going to have to boil some more veggies. By this time the squash was done and the ketchup was cool, so I dumped the ketchup into a container and washed out the pan, and then put green beans in to cook.

The soup should be done...oh hey, it's done now. Crap. Well anyway, I'll turn that off and let it cool for a while. The beans might be done too. Then I will make two pans of egg bread and a batch of almond butter brownies, and we should be set for at least the beginning of this week. Yay.

Oh! and you know how I posted about the cod liver oil? Well, I missed the teeny print on the Nordic Naturals bottle that said REFRIGERATE after opening. So I threw out half a bottle. Clark has been a train wreck with sleep AGAIN and now I have it so I am happy. I also bought Carlson's cod liver oil capsule for myself to help with my RA inflammation.

And...I just got new insurance, and now I can go to the Arthritis Center in Riverside! I am soooooo excited and will keep you all posted. They believe in antibiotic therapy, which is super cool. People get cured, they really do, over there. My appointment is in two weeks!