You Can't Freeze Pudding

Last week, as I'm sure a lot of people are painfully aware, we had a heat wave.   And storms.  The two are synonymous with summer on the east coast.   Spring is heavy rain, summer is heat and thunderstorms, fall is pretty when there isn't storms and hurricanes.     During all of these events, trees tend to fall and around here a lot of the power and phone lines are above ground on poles.   What happens when a tree or giant limb falls on a line?   Shockingly it comes down.    Or a transformer or substation gets hit either by lightening or trees or recently.a raccoon.  

A week ago friday we had a storm about 9 at night.   I stood on the porch as I ted to do during storms and watched.   I love thunder storms.  Freaks Mr. Tinkerpro out every time and if lightening is cloud to sky I come in, but I told him this storm is different.    Thunder but not a ton, wind like a hurricane and lightening that was cloud to cloud.    Sounded like hail was falling for awhile yet it wasn't.    Yep, it was a different storm, but not the worst we've seen.     Millions of people were withouth power.   When the temperature at 5 am is almost 90 degrees that is a problem.    I'm not going to go into all the whining and complaining and calls for "they have to DO something" that the news chose to air day after day after day.    Yep, it is stinkin miserable if you don't have power, but do you have options?    Can you go to a hotel?    Harumph, some hotels were gouging prices charging up to $500 a night.    They ought to be ashamed.    Do you have friends or family with power, can you go there for a few hours or to sleep?    Is someone forcing you to be a martyr?    I had one of those in my neighborhood, half the area was without, half had.   We were very fortunate to be on the side that had.   TinkerDaughter's friend on the other side of the neighborhood did not.   TinkerDaughter was talking to said friend, and told her to come to my house.    I found out and spoke to friend several times, said come over, I have everything except good cell phone reception (towers lost power) and no cable tv, but other than that, we're in fine shape.     She never showed up, I assumed she got power back.   Nope, she complained on Monday about how miserable she was all weekend in the heat and humidity until TinkerDaughter told her to shut up.   There was no reason for her to suffer like that it was a choice she made.    She is also extra extremely pregnant.     You can't fix stupid.

Only one woman did they show on the news who had common sense and when I saw the story I wanted to know why they couldn't find more people like her.    Her response to the news crew who was trying to muster up the sad and downtrodden said, "I have my house, hot water and my toilet works.    We are fine and grateful.   Yes it is hot, but we will survive".     A woman after my own heart, except she forgot to mention the wine.    

Saturday when my power came back on I took most of the expensive stuff out of the kitchen freezer and put in the chest freezer in the basement with the thought that if power would be an issue, a full freezer would keep a little longer.   In the upstairs freezer I kept the ice cream, a small amount of meat and then I got the bright idea to put the homemade pudding in thee.   I figured it is milk and chocolate, it is good extra cold, it would help fill the freezer so it kept better, and what the heck.   A few days later (after the refrigeragor decided to die, which is another story all together) I put the pudding back in the fridge thinking we'd have it for dessert that night.

Nope.    When thawed, homemade pudding looks like curdled milk and gets a chalkey taste.   I could have overlooked the asthetic unplesant look, I couldn't get over the icky taste.