Bacon, and most pork products can thaw and be refrozen. Because pork fat is very stable, I have actually used previously frozen pork fat in sausages, and once stuffed, they get refrozen again. Bacon is cured, and will not harm it if it was thawed and refozen again. Unless the freezer has very poor insulation, a 48 hour loss of cold will just thaw a few things on the uppermost sheves. Here, I put the fats and sausages, as well as any previously cooked mixtures like meat pies with raw crusts. My recent loss of freezer cold, was probably almost 2 days as well, and many things were still quite firm. Shrimp can be cooked and then refrozen after being cooked. If you have space, add a couple of water filled plastic gallon jugs to the upper shelves. As once drozen they act as cold sources and that will help keep the other, lower items, cooler for a while longer.Butter will keep fine if partiall thawed an refrozen. Keep it tightly wrapped however as it can soak up odd smells. If the veggies were just slight thawed, they should also be OK. They aren't cooked yet, so they will be fine. But because of moisture produced when thawed, they might clump up as solid bricks after being refrozen. You can imagine if this were a 3 day or more power outage. My parents went though that, until I got them a 4000 watt backup generator. Luckily, I have only had to use it once since then.

Grainlady doesn't come here anymore. Our loss. Feel free to post a new thread any time you have a question, even if it relates to something you saw in an old thread. That way you can put the screen name of the person you're asking for in the title, and you'll get more looks, anyway, if it's a new thread. As to storing cooked food, yes, you can (I don't know of any anaerobic safety issues), but I don't know if it'll do you any good. If there are already mold spores in the food, or bacteria, I think they still grow, albeit slowly. Think about when you open a container or yoghurt or something for the first time and it's off. Cutting the air out of the storage is good, but you might want to save your food saver bags, which are expensive, for something you're going to store for a longer time, and use a regular zipper bag for this. You can also portion it into smaller bags so you're not adding contaminants if you don't use the whole thing at once. Or put most of it in a food saver(s) in the freezer, and just keep the amount you expect to use in the next day or two in the fridge.

I’m sorry to say, but if you are talking about stripping wood, you cannot do this safely indoors. The fumes will seriously injure you. I “get away with” a lot, but that is one thing I will not risk. I could tell you 2 stories that would curl your hair. You must do this outdoors. At the same time, most strippers do not work well when it gets cold. Every winter I seem to find stuff that needs stripping, and I just have to wait for springtime. I push the season by doing it in my garage with the door open. There are “Safe” non-toxic strippers but in my opinion, they do not work. If you are talking about staining and varnishing, that is one thing I do “get away with”, if the project is small. I will do picture frames and things of similar size. I usually coat quickly in my basement workroom, then leave the room, shutting the door. I turn off the heat ahead of time so the smell is not pumped all over the house. I leave it off at least until the coat is set. Even then, unless I do it first thing in the morning, my husband will come home and say, “What did you do?!” You can’t do your stairs until you can open the windows. Way too much surface area.

haha - great question! I was hoping to get the fridge to work for another week until I got the replacement heater. I figured I could simply defrost it again when I needed to.