The Saga of SubZero

About three weeks ago, I was cooking a shepherd’s pie.

I will now pause to address the concerns raised by the UK cooks every time this is mentioned. In UK, shepherd’s pie is made with minced lamb and cottage pie is made with minced beef. In US, any dish that involves layers of corn or beans, followed by ground meat/meat substitute topped with mashed potatoes and then cheese is called a shepherd’s pie.

There we go, the grand battle over minor cultural differences is avoided. Where was I?

I was making Gordon’s shepherd’s pie, opened a bag of shredded cheese, dipped my hand in there and felt something slimy. The cheese didn’t pass the smell test so I tossed it. I had just bought it a couple of days before, but what are you going to do? I opened a new bag and went on with cooking.

Three days later, I was making an egg scramble for breakfast. Nothing special, some sliced sausage browned, mushrooms, eggs, favorite seasoning with some garlic scrambled in the same pan, and a bit of cheese on top.

The new bag of cheese had gone bad.

This was not normal. Typically, the cheese doesn’t go bad in our fridge. Sometimes it dries, but we usually consume it before it goes sour. This was sour.

I open the fridge. The temperature indicator is at 35 degrees. I look at it. I touch things. They seem cold but maybe not cold enough? I get my cooking thermometer, turn it on, stick it in the fridge, and promptly forget about it.

An hour later I go in to grab something and check the thermometer. 55 F.

Any temperature above 40 degrees means we are growing bacteria at an exponential rate.

I open the crisper drawers where the produce is. Rot City. The Brussel sprouts went bad, and they never go bad. There is eggnog in this fridge. The eggnog my eggnog-fiend husband has been drinking for the past few days. There are leftovers. There are… You get the picture. I clean the fridge out.

My only refrigerator option is the small fridge in the craft room, which we use as a beverage fridge. It doesn’t hold much, but I can get new eggs, new milk, and new coffee creamer and put it in there.

The kitchen fridge is a Subzero 640, meaning it is 48 x 84 x 24 inches, and the previous owners built the kitchen around it. It is 27 years old and hideously expensive. I know this because two summers ago we paid way too much money to repair the freezer. We opted for the repair because buying a new fridge was prohibitively expensive and due to the pandemic, there were shortages, and we would have to wait months for one.

We were assured that the repair would hold, but we were warned that the lifespan of this fridge is about 20 years. The freezer is still working.

We try to get a repair. There is exactly one factory technician working on these in the area and there is a wait.

Replacing the fridge with a different, cheaper model, is not an option. Refrigerators come in two basic types – freestanding and built in. Our fridge is built in and if we replace it with the freestanding fridge, not only would it not fit into the cabinet, protrude, and have venting issues, but the island would prevent the doors from comfortably opening.

The election is coming up. The tensions are high. For reasons that I will go into below, the fridge is a pressure point for me. I have to have a working refrigerator.

On top of that, we are editing this book that needs way too much work and we are behind in our writing schedule. This adds stress, because if we don’t finish soon and write something else, we are going to have budget issues next year. I’m already stressed beyond all reason, and I need this fridge disaster like a hole in the head.

We talk about it and despite the awful cost – I’m not going to tell you how much, because I don’t want to cause a collective BDH heart attack – we decide to replace it. We can’t keep throwing $2,500 at it every year or two to repair it. This is the kind of emergency that savings are for.

I start researching and find out that SubZero has a new model with the exact same dimensions. If I can find a unit, it’s a straight swap. I call around to the local dealers. Great, we find a unit in stock and they can deliver it on Friday, election week.

The dealer sends a link to pay. I pay.

Payment pending. We will text you the receipt.

What does this mean? What do you mean, it’s pending? It should be an instant draft.

Maybe it takes a bit. I email the dealer, letting him know the payment is made, because I desperately want that fridge to be installed on Friday.

Several hours later the dealer emails back. I don’t see anything on my end.

I don’t have the receipt. I call to the bank. The bank says things like, “we don’t know anything about anything” and “what is money?”.

I can’t cancel the payment. The portal I sent it through has no customer service support. I’m rapidly approaching the limit of my ability to even.

24 hours later, the payment processes. The fridge is coming on Friday.

By this point the results of the election are out and everyone is calling me. The political ban on the blog is still in effect, so I will not go into it, but long story short, it’s stress city.

The entire Friday I can’t concentrate because the fridge is coming. Finally, I get a notification that they are 45 minutes out.

This is going to get a little bit personal. When Gordon and I were very young, we lived in a little shack in the mountains of North Carolina and we were poor. Not middle class poor, not paycheck to paycheck poor, the “not sure where the food is going to be coming from” poor. It was winter, we bought a month’s worth of meat, and then a storm hit and the power was out for 5 days. We had to get a big black garbage bag and throw it all out.

As I’m typing this, I can picture it in my head. I remember what we were wearing. It is branded on my brain. So I have a hard time cleaning out the freezer. It takes a bit of will power. But the fridge will need to come out, so I get my husband and we clean out the freezer and throw away some old food that’s been in there for far too long. Into a black garbage bag it goes. ::deep breath::

The delivery crew arrives, and then Gordon call me into the kitchen. There is a board under the fridge that was put there so there is no gap. It is mortared in. It will require a general contractor to remove. The fridge will not be installed today.

Gordon says, “I can see why they put it in there. They were like ‘this fridge will last us 20 years’.”

I don’t say anything.

Gordon starts gently rubbing my back, and I look at him and say, “I can’t.”

And he says, “It will be okay.”

And this little voice in my head says, “No, it’s not okay, and by the way, you threw out all that old fish for nothing.”

My options are very few. I can have a bitchy moment, but it will not get the fridge installed and the installers didn’t sign up for my freak out. The installers assure me that if we let them drop off the fridge, they probably will have availability to come back here on Monday. I sigh and I nod, and I bail as the new fridge, still in a giant box, is left in our garage.

I call Kid 1. The next day, Kid 1’s boyfriend and his brother who works as a contractor arrive, and the plate is removed and the top edge of the cabinet is trimmed to the installer specifications. I call back to the dealer.

We will call you on Monday.

On Monday, they call. I pick up, hoping for that Monday appointment. Some other things happened, and this fridge is now the axis upon which my stress rotates. It’s not entirely logical, but there it is. For some people, it would be no big deal. You order take out and wait. We have the small fridge for eggs and dairy. Not exactly a hardship. For me, however, not having a fridge is very difficult.

We will install it on Thursday.

This was just one hit too many.

Here is the thing. No matter how hard the circumstances are, you have to carry on. Because life doesn’t stop for us. We can take a moment to deal, but then things have to keep going. I’m not the roll-over type. When it comes down to it, very few of us are. We are biologically hardwired to survive.

I edited 110 pages between Monday and Thursday. A small win, but still a win.

Here it is. It’s in. It’s pretty much empty right now, but it has all the drawers and space you could ever want.

I’m sure that there will be another crisis life will throw my way. In fact, it did, and I will have pictures for you tomorrow. But meanwhile, this one crisis has a resolution. I have picked up and I’m moving on. And if it breaks again, I will handle that too.

Onward, to glory and full produce drawers!