Yes, There's an Upside to a Partially Defrosted Freezer!

I haven't posted for a week or so because we took a little trip to Laughlin, NV. Friends had received 2 free comps and invited us for a night, and we had received 2 free nights too and added them on. So we had four very nice days at the Colorado River, just as the big Laughlin River Run event was getting started. This is one of, if not the largest biker events in the West. All the hotels had tents set up in their front parking lots for vendors and food stands. Neeless to say, there were some very interesting (i.e., scary!) looking characters in town, and I think we got out just before all the madness was to start.

We did manage to take a little side trip to Oatman, an old mining ghost town on Historic Route 66. The wild burros come into town every day, wait for the tourists to feed them purchased carrots, and then head back to the hills at night. They're just too cute. I found this picture on Wikipedia.

So what does all this have to do with a defrosted freezer? Well..... when we got home, Eddie did some ironing and put the cooled-down iron on top of the freezer, but the cord was hanging over the front and when we went into the freezer, the cord kept the door open a bit, and this morning the temperature alarm started beeping and then we knew we had a problem on our hands. So we started taking food out and putting the still frozen things in ice chests with blue ice blocks and threw out old and damaged goods.

So here's the good part: we weeded out some old stuff and found some great things in the back where items tend to get lost and forgotten. I'm thawing out for dinner two containers of pozole from last year. I'm looking forward to that. Also, there was a package of turkey necks, so I started a stock with onions, carrots and celery. As I came across more stuff, in the pot they went. So now in addition to the turkey, there are chicken breasts on the bone, cooked chicken breasts, two bags of corn cobs, a container of chicken broth, and the usual stock herbs and spices like bay leaf, peppercorns, thyme. I threw in a head of garlic cloves too. So this should be a very complex and interesting stock. So I'll post again regarding how I ended up using the stock and some of the other goodies we came across.