A penny for your thaws

Remember that truly brilliant idea someone gave me to freeze a paper cup of water and then put a penny on top, so that if you ever had a power outage happen while you were away you could check to see if your frozen foods had thawed and then refrozen and were unsafe?

I kept thinking the last few months that evaporation was getting to mine and that I really ought to refill that cup, but the penny was frozen onto the top and, eh. It’s cool.

The door on our garage freezer bounced slightly open and was apparently like that overnight–on a night that hit 31F. (Unless we had a very small earthquake that shook it ajar. Dunno.)

There was this moment of horror, followed by the realization that I could actually know something about the effects: check the penny!

It had slipped to the edge of the cup and then slid down the side and was frozen in place upright. The door had not been closed yet but the ice seemed solid. The food seemed solid, even the bag of cranberries on the door right next to that cup. Small things thaw faster, exposed things certainly do, and they weren’t.

Lucked out.