Free Food... With a Catch

So, Mom wanted to clean out the upstairs freezer (you know, one of those half of the fridge type freezers), and it so happened that I was going to be in Calgary for a few days while I took a course through work. We made plans to clean the freezer, as we always do, and then in the few days when we were both in Calgary at the same time we failed, as we always do, to execute the project.

In order to remedy this and to defeat the freezer once and for all we decided some kind of division of labour. Mom was going to Mexico so she clearly couldn't take the first move, so it was up to me. She said to go through the freezer, take what I wanted, if anything, and leave the rest for her to go through. In this process I did take the liberty of throwing out those things which were completely unidentifiable, or the things that we were able to identify but wished we weren't.

So that is how it went. A friend and I dove into the freezer to tackle this seemingly gargantuan job. Why she helped me I do not know, but I am glad someone was there to grab me by the heel to pull me back out again.

Shelf by shelf we went through everything in the freezer. It was kind of amazing what we found. There were what looked like well packaged and hopefully well preserved foods, and then there were some half opened but potentially well preserved foods, and then there were the foods that scarcely resembled foods.

In this process I found some stuff that was mine, and some other stuff that looked ok. I tossed it in a cooler to take home. When we threw out the really bad stuff there was still quite a bit of good food for Mom and Dad.

This was a good situation, I grabbed a little extra food, and now Mom only had to go through the remaining stuff to see what she wanted and what not. We even took the time to sort everything so that they might find stuff instead of just giving up and leaving it in the back (which seems to be our usual system).

Anyways, I took my food and I headed back to Rocky Rapids.

That was food, and here comes the catch.

The next night I thawed out a steak of some sort for supper. It was not packaged that well, but the saran seemed to keep out most of the frost bite. I cracked open a garlic sausage that was almost completely unwrapped, and then the dregs of a pack of bacon that was sort of in a bag.

The steak, it turns out was almost untouched by its lengthy stay in the freezer. The garlic sausage had definitively dry ends, but was perfectly edible. The backon on the other hand... I got one of my five slices down and was done. I supposed the smell of it should have turned me off, but it was bacon! I only ate the one slice... well, the once slice and one bite of another slice to confirm... and then I tossed it.

Overall, I am expecting a sort of 50/50 on this food as some seems ok, and some... not so much.

So it has been an adventure, but the real adventure happened the morning after the bacon. Have you ever had a bathroom emergency? Sure you have, we all have them from time to time. Now, imagine having a bathroom emergency while you are in a pool.

Oh yeah. How do you manage to swim across the pool as fast as you can (while holding in your business), and then get up on the deck (while still holding in your business), and then sprinting to the change room (nonchalantly of course), and then, and only then execute said emergency. Let me tell you, it is tricky, and I never did finish my swim that day. Maybe it is because I could not handle the walk of shame back across the deck and into the pool, or maybe its just because I know these things come in pairs... or triples if its a bad day...

Anyways. The moral of the story is, even if your Mom says you can take what food you want, it might not always be a good idea...

Yeah... watch out.

Gahhhh.