Be careful what you wish for. That is the lesson I learned this past week. It wasn’t a simple wish like hoping that the ice cream shop has my favorite flavor as the daily special. It wasn’t as complicated as wishing for world peace. It was kind of in the middle but then it snowballed…. literally.
Our refrigerator broke. It has always been a loud appliance. I heard the noises and thought my refrigerator is talking to me. It made nice little whirls when it was happy and clunks when it was mad. My refrigerator was a little temperamental but it did its job and kept my food cold….until last Monday morning.
I went into the kitchen and felt the universe was off. (Okay, maybe not the universe.) I opened the fridge to get my milk to make my cappuccino and things were cold but not ice, ice cold.
I then opened the freezer and then it was evident….something isn’t right. My ice cubes were melting. My food was still very solid but my ice cube tray had water in it. OH NO!
My heart started to beat rapidly and I went into go mode. First thing, call husband in a complete panic and yell at him like it is his fault. (This is not really a good first step but it seems to be my go to when something breaks.)
Next, I grabbed every cooler and container I could find and started to fill them up. We have a chest freezer so I was able to get a lot of food in there. I was feeling pretty good about the situation especially since it was January and I knew it was below freezing outside and my food would stay good until we got the new refrigerator.
What I didn’t realize is that you can’t just go into the store and come home with a new appliance. Anything we wanted was almost a month delivery time…A MONTH!!!! The ones we could get next day were waaaaaay too small so we had to settle for a model that wasn’t our favorite but we could get it in 5 days.
It’ll be great. I can use up ingredients and purge some things that really needed to go. I can make something good out of this situation.
Here is where the wish went wrong. I said “I hope it stays cold out so we don’t have to toss out all our food.” I didn’t add in the clause “and our new refrigerator comes.”
Mother Nature took this as a challenge. So now….because of me…we are experiencing some of the coldest temperatures this region has seen in years. We’ve had snowstorms, below freezing temperatures and a wind-chill that makes your saliva turn solid if you open your mouth. (I haven’t tried this but it must be true because I read it on the Facebook.)
I tried to tell her that we were good and she could get our weather back to our normal cold, miserable January….but she is not listening. (I actually think I could hear her laughter as the cold wind cut through my thermal leggings.)
I have incredible guilt that I subjected the Midwest to this horror all because my refrigerator broke. My wishes are so powerful! (I wished one time on a star that Earl, my then boyfriend, would marry me….BOOM….we have been married for YEARS!)
Today I went back outside and had a long talk with Mother Nature. (It wasn’t incredibly long because it is -20 outside with a wind-chill of -40.) I asked her gently if she could warm it up a little.
She acknowledged me with a whoosh of cold air blowing up my coat and a creak from the trees. I think the creak was a tree, it could have been my bones breaking like icicles off an old gutter. It may take a few days to get back to a normal winter temperature but until then….I hope you can make some creative meals with what you have in your own refrigerators.
I promise the next time something breaks, I will have a little more control with my wishes!
So this week’s recipe is courtesy of my broken refrigerator. I made this “crustless” quiche to use up some of the more perishable items. Bon Appetit had given me the concept a couple of years ago in this article. It is simple and a great way to make a dish without a recipe especially when stores are closed due to a Polar Vortex! (I used more veggies so I decreased the milk so it wouldn’t be too soupy.) And so I don’t have to answer the emails…yes…this had a lot of “fat” in it….I was using up food…ta-dah. I’m not eating this every week but I would totally make it again.
Crustless Polar Vortex Quiche
Ingredients
8 eggs, beaten
1 cup of heavy cream
1 cup of gruyere cheese
4 ounces salami
1 pound of cooked breakfast sausage
2 cups of chopped fresh spinach
1 cup chopped red peppers
Fresh pepper (I didn’t add salt because the salami was VERY salty.)
Directions
Spray a 3 quart rectangular baking dish with nonstick spray.
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Beat eggs, cream and cheese together. Pour into dish.
Add remaining ingredients in layers. (Poke them down a little so the egg gently flows over the top.)
Bake for 35-45 minutes. Mine took a while to set in the middle. Like the BA article says, it should be golden brown on the top and springy to the touch.
