I have no fridge. Please help with meal ideas!

[lomplan]

I live alone with DS aged 5.

My fridge/freezer has stopped working. I noticed this morning that it didn't feel that cold, the fridge is 13 degrees inside. So all the food has spoiled.

I need to find a suitable replacement, have it delivered and then leave it to rest for 24 hours.

What can we eat? Pasta is an obvious one. But we both have packed lunches for school and work.

I would go before, but we leave the house at 6:30am and nowhere around me is open at that time.

Is everything really spoiled? Vegetables should all be fine, and even most meat would be ok to cook after a few hours at that temperature.

Butter and eggs should also be ok at room temperature! And probably hard cheese for a couple of days.

The fruit and veg will be fine, however we were away Thursday and Friday, got back last night but didn't go in the fridge. So I'm not sure how long it's been like this for.

Lunch will be fine, most things can stay out of fridge , butter, cheese veg and salad Or just get a cool bag, buy some ice and chuck it outside it's cold outside.
Make vegetable dishes they don't need to be in fridge, veg curry, jacket potoes ect

You need a fridge ASAP. Try Freecycle, before the tip on Facebook, free stuff in your area, again Facebook.

Jacket potato and beans.
Beans on toast.
Tuna pasta bake.

For lunches tomorrow, can you have a sandwich with either, jam, marmite, peanut butter, tinned fish (open tin and make in morning)? So nothing you need a fridge for.

For lunches how about tinned tuna, opened jars of mayo will be fine out of the fridge for a while, tomatoes are better at room temp, dinners you could have lentil- based spag bol, or buy tins of ready made bolognaise, tinned chilli & micro rice/jacket spuds- basically have a walk down the tinned foods aisle and grab whatever takes your fancy. Fray bentos chicken puff pastry pies were a fabulous treat in my childhood!

Oooh, peanut butter & mashed banana sandwiches - food of the gods!

This happened to us just before Christmas! We had a new one delivered within 24 hours. The bottom of our fridge was actually still cold so just just moved everything that absolutely had to be in the fridge down to the bottom veg drawers.
is there any chance that any part of your fridge might be chilled enough until the replacement comes?

Fridges don't need 24 hours.
4 hours to settle, and they cool pretty quickly after that (we've had 2 delivered this year 🫣 first one froze stuff in the freezer, but heated stuff in the fridge......).

BUT: egg mayo sandwiches. Tuna mayo sandwiches. Corned beef sandwiches. Hard cheese sandwiches, along with fruit, veg, biscuits, crisps etc will keep you for lunch.

Toast with pretty much any topping for breakfast. Milk could be difficult, but given the current weather, I'd buy a small bottle frequently, leave it on the coldest windowsill you have (outside??) and replace frequently.

Dinner: jacket potatoes and most of the toppings you don't use for sandwiches fillings, or beans. Pasta and sauce. Vegetable stir fry.

Meat and dairy are going to be the only things that are tricky to keep.

Do you have a cool box or could you ask to borrow one. This is what we did one year when waiting for a new fridge. Kept it outside the back door with ice packs in it to keep stuff cool.

You can stand milk in cold water to keep it cool.

This is a myth! Unless you continually change the water, it will warm to room temperature pretty quickly and have no cooling effect whatsoever.

Oh and just to add;
regarding our new fridge we were able to plug it in and use it straight away, no time needed for settling on whatever.

Thank you so, so much everyone!!!!