Great idea for areas prone to power outages.

house_cat · ‎03-09-2010

For those of you that are evacuating from the coast, I just heard a great tip. It's called the one cup tip. You put a cup of water in your freezer. Freeze it solid and then put a quarter on top of it and leave it in your freezer. That way when you come back after you've been evacuated you can tell if your food went completely bad and just refroze or if it stayed Frozen while you were gone. If the quarter has fallen to the bottom of the cup that means all the food defrosted and you should throw it out. But if the quarter is either on the top or in the middle of the cup then your food may still be ok. It would also be a great idea to leave this in your freezer all the time and if you lose power for any reason you will have this tip to fall back on. If you don't feel good about your food, just throw it out. The main thing is for all to be safe. Please SHARE this on your page. 😀

Note from me, House Cat... the above is not my FB post, it's from Country Living Magazine, but I thought it was worth sharing.

~ house cat ~

meallen616 · ‎01-10-2013

millieshops · ‎03-09-2010

I do something similar every spring and fall when I make my snowbird transition. Once the refrig and freezer are clean and ready to sit for some months, I dump one trayful of icecubes into the cube container. If they are still ice cubes when I come back next season, I know there have been no long power outages. If I have a big sheet of ice, I know power was off.

fthunt · ‎12-24-2010

In both my big freezer as well as my refrigerator freezer I keep several of those frozen blue ice packs that are used for cold drink/food picnic baskets. Should power go out the frozen packs will give the food a little more time before thawing. Note: I don't get the need for the quarter, if cup of water has melted, then beware of your food stock.

Mominohio · ‎08-08-2010

@fthunt wrote:
In both my big freezer as well as my refrigerator freezer I keep several of those frozen blue ice packs that are used for cold drink/food picnic baskets. Should power go out the frozen packs will give the food a little more time before thawing. Note: I don't get the need for the quarter, if cup of water has melted, then beware of your food stock.

You can tell, if the quarter is at the bottom of the cup (and it has refrozen when the power came back on) that the contents were completely thawed. The cup of water got warm enough to completely thaw and the quarter sank to the bottom, then the cup refroze when the power came back up.

If the quarter is at the top still, your freezer stayed on and food is safe. If the quarter is in the middle somewhere, the freezer lacked power for some time, but not enough to melt things entirely, and food may still be usable.