I had an out of routine experience last week. Ida had me out of electric for about two and a half days coming back sometime after dark Friday. I quickly unplugged everything from the generator and started plugging everything back in. I forget if it was Tues or Wed, I was working in the garage and I had bought a new water valve for the bottom of the tank since it leaked air and that's where i thought I was losing it.
It helped but I heard it go off at 2 AM. I went out to unplug it rather than letting it fill up and leak again. I was trying to determine which cord was the power and I saw the cord to the freezer sitting on my workbench. The meat was all floating in ice, unfrozen. Disgusted, I started emptying it into the garbage tub and pulling out all my snus. Most had been sitting on a ledge but a couple boxes were floating in the ice water.
The next morning it hit me that I didn't need to throw it all out, except for the seafood stuff and retrieved it out of the tub and started cooking it up. I didn't realize how much meat I actually had in there. After cooking it I was cutting it up in little chunks for my dogs. I filled the biggest container I had that would fit in the refrigerator and started using gallon freezer bags. I ended up giving a bag to three of my neighbors that had dogs and forgot there was one other dog and still filled two more gallon bags.
I tried the SPCA to see if they wanted it and, of course, they didn't. I finally settled on posting it for free on FB. Of course some Karen had to post a negative comment but it took less than two hours that i had a gal who wanted both bags since she had two big dogs. So the meat wasn't a total waste and my dogs have been loving the presents.
Two good things came out of my stupidity other than making dogs happy. I know exactly how much snus I have in reserve and it gave me the opportunity to repair the rusting top of the freezer, along with a much needed defrosting. Anyone that has a rusting appliance, check out Rust-Oleum's Appliance paint. Amazing stuff. I chipped away all the loose paint, sanded the top, applied a rust inhibitor, then spray painted the top. It looked so good I thought about getting more and doing the whole thing but I didn't.
Now I have an exclusive snus and nicotine freezer and I don't plan on cluttering it with a lot of meat again since most of my meals have been Tovala lately.