In the pantry

It's Monday!!! My only problem with Mondays is that my hubby has to go back to work. :-( Other than that, I find myself constantly looking for different places to start over; whether it be organizing a room or beginning to blog again. Such was the case today. I opened up this blog early this morning, but it's now 3:28 and I'm just now posting. It's been that busy.

I have 2 upright freezers. One is a frost-free and the other is a manual frost. I love them both for different reasons. My favorite is my frost-free because, well, it's frost-free. The only thing I have to do is keep it clean and organized. One thing you should know about frost-free freezers is....the same thing that keeps them frost-free also dries out your food faster. When I heard this I though, 'hm, makes sense!' I love my manual frost freezer because it was a good find. I got it at an auction for next to nothing. And hey! Now I have 2 upright freezers.

So, today I find myself defrosting my 'good find'. I haven't defrosted anything since I still lived with my mother and we had a frig with the freezer on top and it was manual defrost. Defrosting it became my job when I was old enough. I kinda enjoyed it, to tell the truth.

Here's what I do: Unplug and empty the freezer. Put everything in a different freezer or coolers. Then, I fill 2 stainless bowls with very hot water. I set each bowl on a different shelf in the freezer. I put a large bath towel in the bottom of the freezer to soak up the water as the ice melts. It's about a 2-3 hour job. I keep emptying and refilling the bowls with hot water to keep the ice melting. I sometimes, carefully, use a knife to pry the somewhat melted ice off the shelves.

I didn't start out today thinking....Hooray!! I'm gonna defrost the freezer. I chose to do the defrosting today because I decided to take some meat scraps out of the freezer to make some home made broth. I call this the 'but first' syndrome. This is when you start to do something and your eye catches something else that needs to be done. You do the second thing 'first' which leads you to something else. You do that thing next which leads you to something else. By the end of the day, the original thing you started to do still isn't done. Do you have this problem too?

You can find out about how I make my home made chicken broth/stock in my Home Made Simple post. Needless to say, I haven't even started my stock yet.