Leaving home for a few days? Then here's a good tip to make sure your freezer is keeping your food fresh while you're away. A North Carolina woman needed to evacuate a few months ago thanks to Hurricane Matthew and wanted to make sure her food would remain edible after she got back. So, she shared this tip with her friends who were also being evacuated from the gulf coast.
The idea is to place a cup of water in your freezer (do this a few days before you're scheduled to leave) and wait for it to freeze over. That way, when you're about to leave for your vacation (or like Sheila, if you're being evacuated), you leave a coin on top of the ice. If when you get back you find that the coin has sunk to the bottom of the cup, or in the middle, you know that your home lost power at some point and your food may be in danger of spoiling.
"You put a cup of water in your freezer. Freeze it solid and then put a quarter on top of it and leave it in your freezer. That way when you come back after you've been gone for a while you can tell if your food went completely bad and just refroze or if it stayed Frozen while you were gone. If the quarter has fallen to the bottom of the cup that means all the food defrosted and you should throw it out"
Now that's a simple tip that could save you from a serious bout of food poisoning.