Making Room For Popsicles

“Miss Elizabeth, the freezer stopped working and everything is thawing out.”

Not the thing you want to hear 20 minutes before your cousin walks down the aisle. And you are 2,283 miles away, on the other side of the US.



So, in my best Scarlett O’Hara “tomorrow is another day” mindset, I told Caro to just shut the door and I would deal with it when I got back.

Turns out, there wasn’t anything wrong with the freezer... just the operators. In order for food to freeze, the door must be shut. Which it did. Refreezed beautifully. Once the acai berries had liquified and dripped down over everything.

Lesson one. Never put anything once liquid in the top of a freezer. Equilibrium and gravity take over.

Those damn acai berries. A year or two ago, the ex thought it would be a great idea to try these new-fangled cure-alls from South America. So he purchased a 25-pound box to get free shipping. Well, at least he got that economy-of-scale thing down pat.

I’m truly sorry I didn’t get a photo of the freezer. Picture boxes of vegetables, puff pastry and phyllo dough, sheets of fresh pasta, bags of shrimp and salmon filets (ok, and the occasional Hot Pocket and Toaster Strudel) thoroughly glazed with mix of grape jelly and corn syrup. I will never think of the color purple in the same way again.

It really wasn’t that bad to clean out....well, nothing that a few rolls of paper towels and some aerobic exercise couldn’t handle. And now, my freezer looks like this.




It was a blessing in disguise....because NOW, instead of forgotten dove breasts, half-used bags of English peas and that forgotten can of lemonade from 5 years ago, I now have......



POPSICLES.