I should have posted this when "Debbie" first hit then when the storm came through Ohio, SORRY! If you have power and a deep freezer you can rinse out Gallon or smaller jugs (milk,jiuce,ect) fill with drinkable water, leave about 2" empty for expantion and freeze. Depending on your freezer and how many you do a once, they should be frozen in 12 to 24 hours. Block ice lasts much longer than cube or crushed. When we camp we put 1 gal and 1 half gal in a cooler the load and top off with some cubes to start things off. If everything goes well we get 3 days at the most. It's not too late to freeze some for your friends without power. Of course, this will help keep the drinks cold on the 4th too.Ivan

If you have a spare sleeping bag or, preferably, a fire shield, a couple of those blocks will keep food cold for days (kept milk cold for a week on a Utah elk hunt).

I did a detail at Sonny Buono NWR at the Salton Sea in July. It would be 105 to 110 at 5 AM. We would go out in airboats to capture sick pelicans for treatment. 10 days in Hades! We were ordered to take a minimum of 2 gallons of water per person for a morning shift. We'd freeze one and (using an old smokejumpers trick) would mix one half Gatorade and half cold water.

I always put a frozen bottle of water in the thigh pocket of my pants or in my pack while hunting.

If you keep those frozen gallon jugs in your freezer when the power goes off they will help protect your frozen food.

Is "shrinkage factor" an issue??

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Still Running Against the Wind

a few years ago we had a major ice storm stall over our area, without power for almost 3 weeks. Didn't have problems keeping food cold with highs in the upper 20s and lows in single digits. Had a small generator to run lights, tv, and furnace. Surprisingly never lost cable or phone. We now have a larger generator that will run refrigerator

If you plan on drinking the water as it thaws, just be sure that you wash the milk jugs out, then rinse with some clorox to sterilize it. Any leftover milk will spoil and mix with the water and make you sick if you drink it.

Years ago we used milk jugs for everything. We'd wash and rinse them and then fill them with sweet tea which we'd freeze. Each morning we'd cut the plastic off and put two frozen blocks of sweet tea in the 5 gal. cooler and add three gallons of fresh sweet tea. For the four of us, it would give us good cold tea through to lunch... then we'd fill the cooler w/ two similar blocks of ice and add water which we would drink through the afternoon. It was wonderful!

If you want a good way to store fish, just clean and prepare them as normal and cut the top of a milk jug open leaving the handle. Drop the fish in, add water and freeze. It works very well. If the power fails, you've got plenty of fish and ice cold sweet tea. All you need to add is some french fries and hush puppies and you've got it made in the shade!

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<><

Why, yes! My left leg is shorter than my right!

His nickname is "shorty".

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Dick Burg

One summer we decided we needed to go to Utah for a mid summer vacation. That was back when we were still stupid and considering moving there or maybe retiring to the desert. The day we got in town, the temp was 114. But it cooled way down to 112 the next day.

One of our friends always loads the back of his jeep up with frozen milk jugs. There's a lot of friction between the eco-weinees and jeepers and even mountain bikers. But they always are grateful for a half gallon of ice and water by mid afternoon. Most are so stupid, they think the little pint bottle of water on the bike frame will be enough for 8 hours at 3% RH.

We took a day and drove up and over the LaSals. It was hot, even at altitude and I thought my dalmation was going to die from it. He did revive when we let him out on a snow bank up above 12,000 feet. He was doing donuts in the remaining snow. So we dropped down the east side of the mountains and into Colorado. It was just unbearably hot. So I pulled into a filling station for some gas and went inside to pay (remember the old days when we did that?) I came out with 2 drumsticks and an ice cream sandwich. My wife got first choice and took the sandwich. I took one of the drumsticks and the dog couldn't wait for the other. He could count, knew there were two people and 3 treats.

Then I went back inside and paid for a block of ice. I managed to wedge it between the back of the console and the little "step" up from the rear footwell to the back floor pan. It took my wife about a minute to understand. Then she found a towel and put it over the ice. It didn't take the dog long to figure it out. He laid right down on it, kind of hugging it.

And for the next couple of hours it took to get back to the motel, he didn't move! We even had to coax him out of the jeep. He was happy where he was. For a short hair dog, he sure hated hot weather and liked cold. Now I wish I had him back!

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Dick Burg

Like many of you, we have a couple of chest freezers here on the rancho. Inevitably, we lose power during snow storms, or rain storms, or electric storms, or if the wind blows, or just about any darn reason it feels like going out. That's rural electric I guess.

Anyway, we learned long ago that if you were going to live here, contingencies had to be put in place. During the storm seasons, we store about 35% of the freezers capacity with block ice, at their bottom. We freeze water in 13 gallon plastic bags by placing them filled and tied into heavy square cardboard boxes, usually six to each freezer. They do the job nicely and the bonus of course, is that you have water when it thaws. During the last incident, we had just bought around $500.00 worth of beef, pork and poultry, when an ice storm hit and we lost the power for over a week. We used the generator once about mid week for each freezer, for about three hours, and there wasn't as much as a drop of water melted. This was during a cold winter but the house was around 70 degrees where the freezers are placed thanks to wood burning stoves and propane fired fireplaces, so I can't say how it would work under other conditions, in other climates. What I do agree with other posters here, are that the blocks are undoubtedly longer lasting than those made from smaller containers. But you have to work with what you got, or sport a big appetite.....or have one hell of a dinner fiesta!

Mrs. Oldflatfoot had been complaining that the ice was a waste of space and electric.....just up to the day we bought all that meat. I think she feels otherwise now.

Cheers;
Lefty