Russ came in the other day and mentioned in a slightly disgruntled fashion that the half-cube of cream cheese left in the fridge (in a ziploc bag) was covered in mold. A little while after he told me this a memory bubbled to the top of my brain…how odd that just a couple of weeks ago I had taken out a half-cube of cream cheese to use and it, too, was covered in mold. Annoying.
A few days later I opened an almost unused container of sour cream and noticed that it already had a spot of mold on it. Once again I made my way over to the trash can with a feeling of irritation.
Only later did the lightbulb slowly start to come on…that was a relatively large amount of molding going on in my refrigerator, wasn’t it? I thought perhaps I should go hit the little button to make it colder. But when I went and looked at the fridge there was no button, and none in the freezer either. I looked at the labels on the front by the water/ice dispenser and pressed a few of the buttons there. When I pressed the button labeled (appropriately) refrigerator, instantly two temperatures showed on the little screen:
refrigerator: 44 degrees
freezer: -2 degrees
Hmmmmm….I wondered…..what should the temperature of a refrigerator be? (I’ve never known this before, just pressed that little button that made the refrigerator colder or less cold.) Thirty seconds with google brought me to the new awareness that 44 degrees was not, indeed, the appropriate temperature for a refrigerator. Instead, it was supposed to be between 33 and 38 degrees.
Oh.
I’m guessing that 6 degrees is the moldy cream cheese difference. And appreciative that in the 3 months we’ve been living with an overly warm refrigerator, no one has gotten food poisoning.
I’ll let you know how the cream cheese does in the next little while.
And, while we’re talking about my appliances, I’d like to suggest that my oven LOVES to make german pancakes. Seriously.
I have made german pancakes a number of times, and I have never quite seen anything like this.
Even Jared decided he like them after this. Too bad I can’t remember what settings I used…
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Our fridge decided it had had enough and got slowly warmer and warmer over time, no matter how much we tried to turn it down. Finally we figured out what was happening and called the repairman (who of course couldn't actually fix the problem until he'd made an appointment to come out and see, then gone back and ordered the parts, then waited for them to come, bla bla). While we waited we rotated bread pans of ice from the freezer to the fridge and back, over and over. People used to do it this way, we kept telling ourselves, but it got old fast. And so did the food. Yeck. Nobody sick here either, but it was worrisome at the time. Maybe moldy cream cheese isn't as dangerous as we think? Now we need somebody to try it and let us know. :)
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