Something else to try: the "brown-n-serve" approach. Cook the half you want to freeze part way, then cool and freeze it. When you are ready to eat it, you just have to finish the cooking process. That seems to keep the cheese from becoming leather -- and the crust as well. When we make pizzas, we make an extra that is only par-baked and then frozen for later -- for those nights we just don't want to cook. When we are ready to eat it, we heat the oven to 400 or 425, and then put in the frozen pizza for 6 - 8 minutes. Sometimes we add a bit of extra sauce to the top and/or extra cheese, but not necessary. If we have the pizza stone in the oven, it takes a longer pre-heat because it takes a while for the stone to come up to temp. But it does make for a better second-time-around crust.

Meat can be defrosted and refrozen as many times as you want. Each time you do so, though, as has been said, the ice crystals that form in the cells puncture some of them and moisture will be lost. In some delicate items, like fish, you can actually turn it to mush. Very unpalatable. There is absolutely no danger in defrosting meat and then refreezing it, as long as you didn't allow it to get too warm.

I concur with plllog's recommendations for cooking it and freezing the cooked meat. Technically, you can refreeze thawed meat without cooking it, especially if there are still some ice crystals in it. But as pointed out, the issue comes from how long was the thawed meat at an unsafe temperature (the danger zone is 40°F to 140°F) where bacteria could grow, and what method of thawing would you use the next time you thawed it to cook it? If you are a person who thaws meat on the counter at room temperature (a really dangerous method, BTW), you could increase the risk of bacteria growth even more. Or if you thaw and hold the meat in the refrigerator and your refrigerator is warmer than 40°F. The other problem is that you really don't want to try to freeze large amounts of thawed food. A home freezer is not designed for that. Your thawed meat will take a l-o-n-g time to freeze again, leaving it at an unsafe temperature (especially large cuts of meat) for an even longer period of time. -Grainlady

It sounds like a comedy of errors. Is there anywhere you can move the potted seed parents under cover while pollinating them? "Rain" isn't an issue here (unfortunately) during the pollinating season. We do have occasional heavy fogs/dews, but they don't seem to inhibit fertilization. You might benefit from placing covers over the fertilized flowers to prevent the pollen from being washed off the stigma until they take. You may, also, need to allow the anthers to dry longer due to differences in varieties, humidity and temperature. That's something you should experiment with while you have flowers of the potential pollen parents to get a feel for how long to possibly expect them to release enough pollen for you to work with. Nothing is hopeless. It will just take a bit more experimenting and exploring to figure out how to circumvent what prevented success the last time you attempted it. Making sure the potential seed parents will even set seed is a good place to start. Before I began pollinating anything, I allowed my roses to set whatever they wished to set so I could determine what might make decent seed parents. From those self set hips, I raised many seedlings to see which germinated easily and well. I figured it would be frustrating and a waste of time and energy trying to get seedlings from roses which refused to set seed, or would set, but refused to germinate. There are many of each of those types. It took a season to figure out which seemed the easiest to work with while I practiced, but I believe it saved me a lot of effort, time and frustration. I still encounter the occasional "mother" which hates setting seed, or which will set them, but whose seed is not easily germinated, but they are fewer and farther between as time goes on. For those, I use them as pollen parents on tried and true seed setters. There are a number of roses which seem to be able to be pollinated with dirt....those which set seed from every flower and whose seeds germinate like weeds. Orangeade and Angel Face were extensively used, often for that very reason. My rose, Lynnie, is another. The miniature, Anytime, seems willing to accept almost any pollen and its seeds come up reliably. I'm sure there are others more suited to your climate which perform like that. Researching them on Help Me Find-Roses can help show you which may be like that and save a season of experimenting. If there are no offspring shown for the rose you are researching, that doesn't mean it won't make a good candidate. It might be too new or no one has reported using it yet. But, there are many in the database for which that kind of information is known and listed. You can also join the Rose Hybridizers Association and post questions about using particular varieties there to see if anyone has experience using them. What were some of the seed parents you tried, but didn't have success with? Perhaps someone here might have raised seedlings from them and can offer information. Kim