Dear Folks, I'm sending this message to both the PADUTCH-LIFE and NYNIAGAR-FOLKS lists because I had written to both groups about my freezers overflowing with frozen leftovers and food and trying to figure out the best way to make more room. Because of the wonderful suggestions I received from both groups, I'm lumping them all into one message to let you know that because of the great responses and suggestions, my freezer dilemma is now solved. First of all you won't believe this but I woke up in the middle of the night last night and couldn't go back to sleep trying to figure out the best way to go about defrosting my chest freezer. There were two things on my mind. (1) the two wire baskets hanging from the top ledge of my freezer were frozen solid with the built-up frost and (2) if I could manage to fish out the old food stored below them in the bottom of the freezer, my freezer would end up half empty and the freezer would have to work overtime to keep it at the proper temperature. After I read all of the suggestions today regarding thawing out the freezer and how to keep what's stored in there frozen well enough to get the thawing job done, I'm happy to say I'm one happy camper right now. By the time my brain kicked in this morning (OK, so it was this afternoon!), I started trying to fish out the stuff stored underneath the frozen hanging wire baskets. I used the longest kitchen instrument I had--a long-handled cooking fork--and succeeded very nicely, thank you, in fishing out the space under the one basket. But it was a more difficult job to reach all the way to the far left of the freezer. But with diligence, I was pleased that I was succeeding. That is until I lost my grip on the fork and it disappeared into the bottom of the freezer. I had nothing long enough to fish the fork out until I checked around the house and found a long metal shelving strip which at least gave me the fork back. After I knew that I could then empty the rest of the frozen food out of the freezer and keep it well enough frozen, I rethought the whole process of my defrosting it. Why bother? The freezer has been working just fine ever since I bought it in Aug. 1979, and if I just bagged up all of the old frozen stuff I was planning to throw into the trash and put it all back into the bottom of the freezer, it would help keep the freezer from working overtime. Not only that, but someone actually mentioned that they're now selling frost-free freezers and with any luck, my old freezer will give up the ghost before I do and I can buy a new-fangled frost-free one. So now all of the old stuff is bundled up in plastic grocery bags and tucked neatly underneath the frozen-stuck wire baskets. In fact, I was even inspired to take a clean rag, run it under hot water and clean up the icky bits of food and stuff that had fallen out of bags and containers. But you know me. I'm long-winded and I have to tell you what I discovered hidden in the bottom of the freezer for years and years. First of all there were several plastic bags with fresh frozen Concord grapes that had been picked from the (now) old vineyard in my "back 40" years ago. That didn't really surprise me but then there were two 1-quart plastic containers which appeared to contain more Concord grapes of sorts. One contained only the grape skins and the other contained the pulp and seeds. That's when it all came back to me. The reason for them was that many years ago I had made up jars of Grape Conserve and found it so delicious that I wanted to make more of it and so at least I got a start on it. I can still taste how delicious it was (sigh!). Another treasure trove were a number of coffee cans filled with stone-ground whole wheat flour. Frankly I forget what I had planned to prepare with that but I'm sure it would have been nutritious. But after I checked out the contents of all the coffee cans and came to another canister that I figured contained the same thing, I was flabbergasted. It was filled with a plastic bag of ground coffee and I had made certain at the time to include enough of the cardboard box it originally came in so that I would know what it was. But that still didn't trigger any memory of mine. You see, the coffee was labeled Cafe Sello Dorado, Calidad Excelso, produced/fabricated in Bogotá, Colombia, South America. In other words Colombian Coffee right from the source. I've been trying so hard to recall my ever buying it but the only conclusion was that on the return from my Amazon Adventure in 1973, I just had to buy a pound(?) of it to take home with me. I had never tasted such delicious coffee in my life while I was in Bogotá and I guess somehow I found room for it in my heavy luggage. But I guess when I got it home I was too chicken to try to brew up a cup of it and so I froze it all. But let me tell you, that canister of coffee did NOT get bagged up with the other old stuff in the bottom of my freezer. If nothing else, one of these days I might run short of my usual supply of coffee and I'll get up the courage to taste test it over 30 years later. You never know what memories you'll dig up by cleaning out your freezer! vee