Food for Thought (V) Food Poison

In life we take many things for granted. One of them is the ordinary refrigerator we all have one in the house. When we get a new fridge, of course, a simple one, all we have to do is to plug it in and set the temperature. And voila!

Because they are so-well made, many of them last tens of years. I remember an old fridge our parents had years ago. Maybe it was a deliberate design to deter the kids. Its door handle gave out electrical jolts whenever we opened it to retrieve cold treats. And it needed a lot of power to run it too.

Today’s refrigerator neither emits dangerous shocks nor requires a lot of energy to operate. Inside it resides a mechanical gremlin who purrs almost nonstop to preserve our foods, and to even make ice cubes for us. Defrosting a fridge used to be a tedious process. But today, the electricity-run ice box can get rid of the built-up frost in its freezer automatically when needed.

The advanced technology used in manufacturing electrical appliances has certainly made fridge one of the most reliable household equipment.

However, in hot weather like the one we had over the past few weeks, besides air-conditioners and electrical fans, refrigerators are the other home appliances that had to work overtime. A scorching hot day causes us to visit our fridge more frequently than usual. Consequently, the little motor in the big box has to chug harder to maintain the preset temperature in the cooler section of the indefatigable fridge.

During these same hot summer days, milk in our fridge turned into curds many days before its “best before dates.” Then it was discovered that the cooler part of the fridge was not cold at all while the freezer on the top oozed out white foggy air when its door was open.

Fortunately, we discovered the mishap before anyone got sick from eating the spoiled food in the fridge. However, before calling the lonely Maytag repairman, we did consult the user’s manual as well as the manufacturer’s website. But we did not learn anything from there that will help our fridge hum happily again. However, when we were removing the foods from the fridge, we discovered the air vents in the freezer covered with ice. Since the effort to scrap the excess ice off the vents was futile, we decided to lower the temperature in the cooler, so it did not have to work too hard during the night before it is repaired the next day.

Unknowing to us, lowering the ice box’s temperature was the thing to do. A few hours later, our reliable fridge started humming again but with a softer tone. And the temperature in the cooler part was restored too. It appears so far the old-faithful has returned to its old glory.

This time, the experience with a mundane object helped us learn a practical lesson. We did feel bad on throwing away some foods that we thought were spoiled. We also realized that we must, in both summer and winter, give a pat or two to this big ice box to ensure it is working properly and is in good repairs. - Ayee