When your home is threatened by a storm, when you’re about to face a zombie apocalypse, or when you’re simply going away for vacation or a business trip, meaning you’ll be away for a while, food is probably the last thing you’re concerned about. But unless you want to deal with all of the rotting products after you’re finally back home, check out this tip that Sheila Pulanco Russell from Lumberton, North Carolina, posted on her Facebook:
“I just heard a great tip for avoiding food contamination. It’s called the one cup tip. 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 away, 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. But if the quarter is either on the top or in the middle of the cup then your food may still be ok. It would also be a great idea to leave this in your freezer all the time and if you lose power for any reason you will have this tip to fall back on. If you don’t feel good about your food, just throw it out. The main thing is for all to be safe.”
Now you can save yourself a lot of time deciding what stays and what goes, as Sheila’s idea seems to work well, judging by the fact that her post got over 265,000 shares and almost 8,000 comments for less than 10 days.
