One Thing Is Working

When we moved here, there was no obvious place for a refrigerator. I thought this made an excellent time to try a cold box.

We have a defunct freezer in the entryway. It's pushed into the northern corner of the room in what used to be a closet.

We have two deep freezers that we would run with or without a refrigerator because of meat storage and other frozen foods, like berries and bone broth. We keep bottles of water in the deep freezer. In the summer, we take some of these frozen waters and put them in the cold box swapping them for the ones that were in there before. We do this two to three times a day.

In the winter, we had to be aware of whether certain foods were actually freezing out there. And now, in this in between time, I put bottles in there yesterday, and they are still quite frozen today.

We are careful to not let anything sit in there long and there has been some discussion of whether we should vent it somehow. So far, there is no odor except when something is missed.

It has also caused us to think carefully about what actually NEEDS refrigeration. Our eggs are only days from the hen that laid them, so we do not keep them in the cool box. Ketchup and mustard are full of vinegar, and we have had no spoilage with keeping them in a cupboard. Butter also just stays in a cupboard for the most part; we do pay close attention to be sure it isn't rancid.

We consider these things, because it is easier to keep track of more fragile food when there is not a lot of clutter in the cold box. I think this particular experiment is a success. Now, we want to figure out ways of keeping food that skip the freezer entirely; Jason is casting an eye at the spring for that.