When the thaw comes, only a fool stands against the tide

A sad example of climate change . . . 

Of all the things I wake up to in this life (hangovers, cat gack on the carpet, summonses, etc) , perhaps the least pleasant in the last month has to have been a squishy wet carpet and the umistakeable smell of defrosting fish in my hallway. The stand-up freezer in my pantry had defrosted. 

Perhaps one of the cats  had opened it in the spirit of inquiry (if you own Siamese, you'll eventually child-proof your house out of self-defense) or maybe I left the door ajar when I was getting that block of Oaxcan cheese out for taco night. Whatever the cause there was water,  ice chunks, and defrosted foodstuffs everywhere. 

It wasn't too bad: I lost all my stocks (like market, life freezer) including about 4 gallons of chicken stock, some really great beef stock and a quart of veal demi-glace. Anybody who has ever made demi just winced when they read that. If you've never made it, it takes a very long time, lots of effort and many gallons of regular veal stock to make just a tiny amount.

Fortunately most of the meat and seafood were in the back of the bottom shelf, and while they were completely defrosted, they were still ice cold (buried in ice, actually). The rest of the week we ate steak, pork chops, prawns, snapper, lamb and hamburgers. I'm so meaty dogs are running from blocks just to smell my deliciousness. 

One thing that was more difficult to salvage were my fruit stores. We keep a garden, and there are lots of great berry farms around, so we store quite a bit of fruit across the year for jams, pies, crumbles and whatnot. I had twenty or thirty pounds of rhubarb, lots of blueberries, blackberries, redcurrants  and raspberries,  and one precious little container of blackcurrants from our very first harvest last year.

Lacking a better alternative (all of our jam jars were full) I made a quick pie, and dragged the rest off to work, and turned them into fruit wine. 

I know, I'm the kit-winemaking guy,  but I do a little of everything. Since I had so many different fruits to work with, I decided to make one giant batch of Summer Sipping Sangria, using a six-gallon (23 litre) Viognier wine kit as a base. With a little luck, I'll have it ready for a little taste by the beginning of August, and for serious drinking  . . . well, soon after that. 

Stay tuned for a pictorial of the entire process right here. I'll post them up as soon as I finish my steakchop prawn sandwich . . .