Forgot to ask, what about butter that had been frozen? Safe, or toss? We're having garbage pickup tomorrow so I'd like to get all items out of there that shouldn't be kept. Thanks!

I can't recommend re-freezing but that doesn't mean you have to toss them! Meats and seafood can be cooked and kept. Put other things in the fridge and then what you can't cook and eat in the next couple of days can be cooked and then frozen. Make casseroles with the meats and veggies, butter will keep in the fridge for weeks. If all else fails, give some to the neighbors or make trades for what was in their freezer. ;)

Dave

Bacon, and most pork products can thaw and be refrozen. Because pork fat is very stable, I have actually used previously frozen pork fat in sausages, and once stuffed, they get refrozen again. Bacon is cured, and will not harm it if it was thawed and refozen again. Unless the freezer has very poor insulation, a 48 hour loss of cold will just thaw a few things on the uppermost sheves. Here, I put the fats and sausages, as well as any previously cooked mixtures like meat pies with raw crusts. My recent loss of freezer cold, was probably almost 2 days as well, and many things were still quite firm. Shrimp can be cooked and then refrozen after being cooked. If you have space, add a couple of water filled plastic gallon jugs to the upper shelves. As once drozen they act as cold sources and that will help keep the other, lower items, cooler for a while longer.Butter will keep fine if partiall thawed an refrozen. Keep it tightly wrapped however as it can soak up odd smells. If the veggies were just slight thawed, they should also be OK. They aren't cooked yet, so they will be fine. But because of moisture produced when thawed, they might clump up as solid bricks after being refrozen. You can imagine if this were a 3 day or more power outage. My parents went though that, until I got them a 4000 watt backup generator. Luckily, I have only had to use it once since then.

The stuff in that was in the fridge (veggies, butter) should be fine. Re-freeze and use first. Ever use a bag of peas as a short term ice pack? Works great, just re-freeze!
Or, make a big pot of veggie soup to eat while you're working on that tree!

Sorry to hear it came down on your house.
Is everyone OK?

Deanna

Thanks everyone. I've kept the butter for Christmas baking and the veggies, gave the bacon, boneless pork (raw), few steaks this morning to the woman who heads our Feed the Hungry program providing free lunches, found a neighbor who will use the shrimp. All from my refrigerators freezer, the temp in my big freezer was 30F, up from 0F, when the power came back on so I'm not worried there (tell me if I should be). 36 yr old Kelvinator that was pretty full:) Our entire town and all nearby towns were without power and there was no dry ice or additional generators to be found - the highway to Olympia (shopping) closed to slides and fallen trees.

Hopefully I won't be taking friends for granted again, I had a yard full the first day, with a boom truck and a 20 ton dumpster. We're great, were not hurt, my insured house is temporarily patched and completely livable. Many, many people here are not nearly so fortunate - the WA and OR coastal communities were completely slammed by this storm and recovery is going to be very long and tedious. We didn't get the flooding, we got the wind - which reached hurricane force before equipment was blown out so peak gusts may not have been recorded.

So I sure don't mean to be whining about a few dollars worth of food, it's just the little decisions - like what to throw away - that are hard right now :)