Menu Plan Monday ~ November 12

In this day and age, it is obvious how much we've come to rely on modern conveniences - and one of the most 'can't live without it' appliances we have would have to be the refridgerator. I'm yet to find a family who willingly goes without a fridge.

We, however, have been forced into a sort of alternate universe by having our fridge break down not once, but twice in the last six weeks. Each time has required repairmen who have taken at least TEN DAYS on each occasion to 'fit us in'. The reasons for this long a wait are absurd - our fridge was just inside the warranty the first time, so we were forced to go with the company-appointed repair folks for our area. There are only TWO authorised repairers for our brand of fridge in our entire city of over one million people - one north, and one south of the city. It's just ridiculous. And then the second time it broke, we were just outside of the warranty period but (thankfully) so close to the end date that they popped us through on warranty anyway. If that hadn't happened we had a fall back of a 3mo parts warranty on the fan they replaced the first time.

So here I am, right this second, waiting for the repairers to turn up. I've had to rearrange my week to accomodate them. Both ten-day-sans-fridge periods were only tolerable due to the loan of a camping fridge from the inlaws, which fits approximately four items of food in it at any one time. This has a massive bearing, obviously, on what my menu looks like, LOL. I do still have a stand-alone freezer but I've been severely restricted in the amount of fresh stuff I can have on hand. I've been grocery shopping nearly every day, just picking up four tomatoes at a time, and a single 2ltr (half gallon) bottle of milk, and the combination of that and the general grumpiness over the fridge has made me dread dinnertime. The refridgerated condiments that I lost when the first fridge dummy spit occurred (they were opened, so needed refridgeration, and there was no room in the camping fridge for anything but the true essentials, like milk, cheese and chocolate, LOL) were only JUST replaced when the second phase hit! However, we are pressing on.

In the meantime, here's a list of meals I could possibly make with what I currently have on hand. I may or may not make these, and we may or may not (LOL) get takeaway this week. It really just depends on whether the guys today can fix the fridge so that I can store more than half a day's worth of food at a time and whether I don't self-destruct from the absurdity of the situation. If they can't fix it today (seems to be the same problem as last time, but replacing the part they said was broken obviously didn't work) then Hubs and I are shopping for a fridge tomorrow. Which, if you know my husband, will be akin to pulling out his toenails one by one, LOL.

Something with eggs - scrambled, fried, 'toad-in-a-hole', frittata (gets a bit hard with no produce to put in it though)
Something with pasta, probably the old fall back Spaghetti Bolognaise - pantry/freezer ingredients. Yay!
Something with rice - I'll have to go shopping specifically for the vegetables I need (eg, Fried Rice) so I'll have to be careful with the amounts I buy.
Something with the crockpot - I've neglected the meat in my big freezer for a while so I'm not sure if its still 'good'. We shall see. Ditto with any vegies I may need to buy. Sigh.
Some kind of roast dinner - I used to marvel at my mother's roasts when I was young. They always looked so complicated and a simple chicken could turn a meal magical. To this day, my absolute number one favourite comfort meal is a roast chicken dinner. And I've since realised that a roast is seriously one of the easiest meals in the world to prepare.

...and for the other two nights...pot luck with whatever's left over in the camping fridge. Or, if my luck holds out, I may get a working fridge by day's end and can do a regular ol' grocery shopping trip tomorrow for meals from Tues-Sun. Just can't count on that at this stage.

Oh, question for those who haven't seen my earlier post on this book:



Does anyone have it? I'm considering ordering it from a bookstore near me or shipping it from the US, and I'd love to have a look-see at the full list of 67 'master recipes' to see if they are things we would normally use. I'd appreciate your help, so please send an email!

P.S. I actually am still grateful for some things with the whole fridge situation - it could have been worse. I'm thankful we've had the use of the camping fridge, despite its diminuitive size (without it, we'd have been forced to rent a fridge or even buy one knowing the original fridge may have been fixed with just a small part). Plus, the repairers could have been unwilling to work with us on warranty considering we'd technically slipped out of the warranty period for the second stint (they'd still have been up for the parts warranty though, but at least taking us on warranty this time around means we're also covered if the problem is somewhere other than the part they already replaced). And it's really not as bad as I'm making it out to be - just that daily shopping can be TEDIOUS, LOL. Bonus: the fridge got a clean out!

Update: The Fridge Man Cometh - and minus some big chunks of mysterious ice somehow frozen to the coils in the belly of the beast, we *think* (touch wood) the problem is licked. Apparently the first time around we didn't leave the fridge off long enough to defrost more than the surface, and the cold air from newly fixed fan made the....oh never mind. It's totally boring. We still have to leave the fridge off for another two days just to be sure, which is a drag. Thereafter, however, fingers crossed. Hubs, who is such a lovely, mild-mannered soul is starting to get a teeny bit annoyed and a third fridge breakdown may necessitate a few words with the manufacturer...

For more Menu Plan Monday folk, go say hi over at I'm An Organizing Junkie :)

Cheers,
Lizzie