My Cold Cellar Saga and Frozen Fries Experiment

 One of the design features I really wanted in a house was a cold cellar.  Of course when I first had this idea I still drank and thought it would be a great place to store home made wine.  Well those days have been behind me for quite a few years, but when I designed my new house last year I included a cold cellar anyway.  According to my builder it will take probably five years before the cement has dried out enough to not cause a moisture problem.  I have a fan running on a timer to keep the air moving.  I initially had it running 24/7 but that was really bringing in all the warm summer air and the room was staying at about 72F.  This was ok for my shelves of canned food, but not so much for fresh produce.  I reduced the timer to four hours at midnight, and along with the colder weather it is currently staying at about 60F and has been for about a week now.  So for the record, when I come back looking for this information,  the cellar starts cooling down by the end of September.

The Superstore had their potatoes, carrots and beets on sale again, $1.99 for 10lb bags, so I decided this is a good a time as any to see how they will hold up in the cold cellar.  I have been keeping potatoes down there all summer but I have had the odd potato start to rot.  I currently have about 30lb of potatoes down there so we will see how that works out.  I have them spread out in a single layer in a large shallow plastic bin.  The beets and carrots are still in their bags, although they should probably be spread out as well.

In other news, I had a big disaster with my frozen fries.  I had the deep fryer heated up, dropped the fries in - still frozen as all instructions suggest - and the oil cooled right down and wouldn't heat back up.  My deep fryer was broken!  Over the next few days I tried the deep fryer again - even after trying the "reset" button - but it wouldn't heat the oil above 125F.  I was really scratching my head; how did putting 5oz (I weighed them) of frozen fries break my deep fryer!  Well I finally took apart the electrical parts to have a look and the wires were all fried inside and the ones attached to the thermostat had broken off.  I don't think I broke it with frozen food but rather tried to cook frozen food at the same time that it broke.

The fries that I had tried to cook weren't a write-off.  I drained them and baked them in the oven and they turned out pretty good.  So I had my husband bring the deep fryer from his house down here and gave it another go last night.  OMGosh they were SO good!  They were fluffy inside, crisp outside (but not too crisp) and tasted wonderful!  Having them blanched before freezing really made them cook up beautifully.  So now I am going to take some of those potatoes in the cellar and make a few more gallon bags of fries for the freezer for quick and easy fries.