Our current fridge is the type where regular fridge is at the top, while the freezer is at the bottom.
The freezer has always seem to accumulate more ice whenever the door gets opened, which sometimes jams up the freezer shelf. But we’d simply scrape it off. This routine has served us relatively well the past years.
Last Tuesday though, there was so much ice accumulation that the freezer door wouldn’t close. I couldn’t take it any longer. Rather than waiting for Cart, I decided to defrost the fridge and solve the issue once and for all.
So I turned off the fridge, put all the foodstuff in a freeze bag, put on a pair of gloves and got to work, scraping off as much ice as I could. My fingers started to get numb even with the gloves on. There was so much ice that it almost filled up a whole pail! I kid you not!
It took about a good 4 hours for the freezer to become completely clear from the ice. I admired my handiwork, wondered why we didn’t do this earlier and then restarted the fridge again.
It was only several hours later that we realised that the fridge didn’t seem to get as cold as before. It started to beep around every 4 hours (it only did that before that when the door was left opened for too long) and the freezer didn’t freeze as usual.
I was horrified. Did I break the fridge?! I was really not keen for us on spending money to get a new fridge and hoped that the problem could be fixed.
In the meanwhile, we tried to salvage as much food as humanly possible. I cooked as much frozen food as possible: pizza, vegetables and whatnots. There were also stuff like pandan leaves that my family brought over for me and fresh curry leaves that we brought over from Singapore. Both of these are impossible to find in Rome and thus, very precious to me. I made foodstuff like Nasi Lemak and Pandan Agar-agar.
And for the past meals, Cart and I have been trying to eat as much of them as possible so as to not waste them. Nasi Lemak with sambal for lunch, and then dinner, and then lunch again. My goodness. I felt so stuffed, it was as if I was being prepared to be harvested for foie-gras. It was hard to breathe at one time.
In any case, the repairman came over the next day to take a look at the fridge (I am duly impressed that he arrived at 2.30pm, considering that our appointment time was from 2 – 6pm) and the thing I feared most came true. He said that the pipes were damaged and it was irreparable. We’d have to get a new fridge.
Oh gosh. I felt horrible and guilty. If I wasn’t so impulsive, the freezer would probably still be working right now. I hated the thought of us having to fork out at least another 600 euro or so on a new fridge. We’re not poor, but we’re not so rich that we could just make a big expense like that without batting an eye.
But Cart was really sweet and comforted me, justifying that it could happen to anyone. He said that he himself damaged a fridge one time accidentally, and insisted that the fridge was already 8 years old and towards the end of it’s lifespan anyway.
(Why is Cart such a sweetie?!)
At this point of time, we’ve been looking at a few fridges to replace the broken one. So far, Cart seems interested in getting this Samsung one which is frost free and is class A++ which means that it uses less energy and thus cheaper to run in time. Too bad it doesn’t come bundled in with a free tablet :p
The bad news is, a lot of my precious frozen herbs didn’t make it and I had to throw them away. The biggest irony is that I could have used them sooner before the incident, but didn’t because using them means that there would be less of them and I preferred the idea of having them for as long as possible.
Now I have none left :/
In any case, I can now look back now and laugh at this situation. This experience has been interesting so far, and I never realised how dependent we have been with having a fridge. From this point till we get our new fridge, we’d have to change our habits in buying our groceries in smaller quantities more frequently.
By the way, you know how last Tuesday, being Eid al-Adha is a day of sacrifice?
Yeah, our fridge was totally sacrificed. Along with my herbs too.
Your husband is so comprehensive;) it was worth the long trip to find him!
I think the word you are looking for is ‘understanding’ Hahaha … another Italian false friend like library, factory and relatives 🙂
Hahaha Sally suggested to use that word instead of “understanding”…next I’d better decide on my own 😀
I feel like my level of English went down since I’ve lived in Rome. Sometimes I keep thinking of the Italian words rather than the English ones. Living in Italy is making us all mixed up :p
Very sad your herbs turned bad.. it’s true that we depend so much on the fridge esp if we keep such precious herbs from far away.
I think in Turin they sell pandan leaves, in case u make a trip there.
Yeah, Elaine told me about it. Makes me puzzled how cosmopolitan Rome doesn’t sell it!