The one good thing about the blackout: it's giving me lots of stuff to write about. In between my previous post and this one, I took my grandmother home (she lives 5 minutes away but had been staying with me and my parents since yesterday; no good for grandparents to be alone when no air conditioning and stuff like that) and helped her empty her refrigerator and freezer of any food that had spoiled.

The food museum is now closed.

Her freezer was filled with artifacts covering the evolution of food over the last 50 years. The Mezozoic shelf included some chopped liver which, in the blackout, had separated into solid, liquid, and brand new organism; a first-edition salisbury steak TV dinner; something made of tofu before tofu was fashionable; matzoh balls from the matzoh meal fiasco of 1956, egg drop soup -- which finally answers the question of what came first, the chicken or the egg (the chicken first appeared on the next shelf down, so we now know it came about 10 years after the egg). The Paleozoic shelf included some chopped turkey, a vegetable dumpling, and a cinnamon roll complete with its original packaging (a rare find!). From the present-day era, Olive Garden leftovers in the original bag, an egg roll, some brownies, half a gyro, and some no-longer-frozen yogurt.

The exhibit starts from scratch tomorrow. By winter, no one will be able to tell the freezer had ever been emptied.