venta: (Default)
venta ([personal profile] venta) wrote2010-12-26 07:05 pm
Entry tags:

Baby, it's cold outside

Gosh. It's cold.

Yesterday morning, the car thermometer was reading -8.

At Christmas, the fridge in the family house is not equal to chilling the vast quantity of food which has been laid in. The turkey, in particular, never manages to squeeze into the fridge. Instead it lives in a box in the outside shed, and the mother worries constantly that it won't be cold enough and we will all contract some hitherto unknown turkey-variant salmonella.

We never have.

Her fears were somewhat allayed this year at breakfast time on Christmas Eve. ChrisC, opening a new carton of orange juice recently imported from the shed, was observed shaking his head and peering perplexedly into the carton. It was open, the seal appeared to have been broken, but no OJ appeared when poured. A close examination revealed that the entire 1.5 litre carton had, in fact, frozen solid.

A similarly humorous experience was had later in the day with a pint of milk. Fortunately that hadn't done the extruding thing, although apparently that has also been seen again recently round these parts.

So, yesterday we were forewarned, bringing the bottle of fizzy wine into the house to chambré (by which I mean warm up to merely "chilled") in plenty of time. The red was promoted from the kitchen to the dining room, and all was well. The traditional late-evening pint of beer turned out a little nippier than expected, having been standing in the customary cool of the utility room, but leaving it on a table nearish the fire rescued it nicely.

Brr. Not going out there.

[identity profile] bopeepsheep.livejournal.com 2010-12-26 07:45 pm (UTC)(link)
We were at a party last night where the Coke (etc) was left in a cool box outside the patio doors, and occasional brave souls went out to get more as required. After 10pm they were coming in with ice in, and after midnight the first too-solid-to-drink one was opened.

The soft drinks in this house are kept in the cupboard under the stairs, which has a window in it, although it is sort-of also in the very warm living room. The cans are coming out colder than if they'd been in the fridge, but just the right side of ice. Lovely. :D

[identity profile] condign.livejournal.com 2010-12-27 02:48 am (UTC)(link)
I was at a party once when the host, unfamiliar with champagne, opened a bottle of sparkly that someone had been storing in the freezer. (Why? Who knows.) There were champagne stains on a fifteen-foot ceiling.

[identity profile] sushidog.livejournal.com 2010-12-27 08:52 am (UTC)(link)
I once left a bottle of bubbly for slightly too long in the freezer (to chill it quickly). When we opened it, it frothed out, but froze as it did so (presumably due to the drop in pressure or something), so we had a sort of instant champagne sorbet fountain, which was kind of cool.

[identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com 2010-12-27 10:09 am (UTC)(link)
That does sound cool! Next time, please take a photo...

[identity profile] feanelwa.livejournal.com 2010-12-27 05:33 pm (UTC)(link)
I left the remains of my Christmas Eve packed lunch in the nice cold car and by the time I took it out on Boxing Day I had two frozen sanwiches and two frozen satsumas. Oops.

[identity profile] onebyone.livejournal.com 2010-12-29 12:53 am (UTC)(link)
Presumably if the turkey freezes in the shed, you become *more* likely to be salmonellaed.