[Sca-cooks] RE: Cheese and Coolers

[Rosine]

> Rosine,
>
> I once heard you had a food vacuum sealer.
> If you still do, I recommend using it to make
> ice packs for your food cooler, and then putting
> your ice for drinks in a small separate cooler.
> Donovan and I have successfully done
> this for several recent events.   This way, your
> food stays dry, and should there be an injury,
> a half melted ice pack works well.
>
> Felicia

Hi Felicia!
   Remember, I said that Arn and I don't have a problem (thanks in part to
me suffering from gadget lust after seeing your vacuum packer). It's folks
who have kids, and the person in charge of our Pennsic Meal Plan/kitchen
that I was worrying about. I thought that it'd be nice if I could give a
suggestion to them more useable than "kill the next person who forgets to
seal the package or is stooopid enough to pour the fresh ice over the
cheese"...
   I hadn't thought of sealing the ice in the vacuum bags, though. Arn,
fighter guy that he is, got sparkly eyes as soon as I mentioned it to him.
   (As an aside, and speaking of handy things about coolers, we learned
(when leaving South Dakota to move to Virginia one July in a car with no air
conditioning) that a cheap washcloth left loose in a cooler was a grand way
to cool off when you're overheated. It's icy cold and leaves a nice shine of
chill dampness where it passes. Of course, back then, we didn't worry about
hygiene as we do nowadays, but the idea hasn't phased completely out of our
usage, and so when we have a cooler full of containers and no plans to ever
use the ice for drinking, we'll stick a washcloth in there. It is a
wonderful thing to offer a Marshal on the field for a quick face and neck
swab, and on occasion, we'll pack a tiny cooler with ice and a bit of
medicinal alcohol mixed in and take it to the field specifically for that
purpose. With no kids in the house, what else are those widdle bitty coolers
good for?)

Rosine