We have a fairly small refrigerator, so if we have a lot of leftovers that need refrigeration, it creates a problem. Our solution to the problem is our balcony, and this time of year that works out very well, because the temperature outside is very similar to what it is in our fridge.
Of course in the middle of winter, our balcony doesn’t work so well as a refrigerator. I fix myself soup just about every week, and quite often my big pot of soup won’t fit in the fridge, because of all of the other things we have in there, so out on the balcony it goes. The next day, often the soup is just one big solid chunk of ice, and I have to put it on top of the wood stove for hours so it slowly returns back to its liquid state again.
Whenever I put something in our balcony fridge, my mind flashes back to 1973 when we immigrated to Canada. I had taken a job teaching in a one-room school in a lumber mill camp. The company provided us with a small travel trailer to live in. Although there was a tiny refrigerator in the trailer, it didn’t work, but that didn’t matter, because we ate all our meals in the camp cookhouse.
One day, one of my aboriginal students gifted us with a big chunk of moose meat. I don’t remember why we took it, because we always ate in the cookhouse, but we accepted the gift. That created a problem, because without a working refrigerator, we had no place to keep it.
It was midwinter, so I decided to just put it up on the roof of the trailer, so it would stay frozen, and the wild animals couldn’t get too it. I put it up there, and as you might expect, after all those months of winter, I forgot all about it. When spring came and I finally did remember it, it was too late. The meat was spoiled.
I felt terrible about wasting the moose meat, and even toda, I feel guilty about it.
Below is a photo of the camp travel trailer where we spent out first Canadian winter.
You can take a look at my paintings: davidmarchant2.ca
No comments:
Post a Comment