Let's Make a Deal

Through a sad series of events we are storing some valuables for a dear friend of ours. Among those things there are multiple power tools and hand tools. There are old tools and very few new ones (they aren't very good anyway, are they?). Even so, there are these tubs. Big plastic 55 gallon drums, with bung ringed lids to seal them. Three of them, to be exact.

At the time of our entrance into the "storage" phase of our life it was, as I said, sad. No one was paying attention to all the details and some things were left for examination later. One of those later examinations was the storage drums.


Today, being the ambitious woman that I am, I washed all of the camp clothes (twice, to be sure, to be sure...) and I finally finished folding all the piled up laundry that had been neglected for a period measured not in days but weeks. The dishes were all caught up as we discovered, while L was gone, that M is quite capable of emptying the dishwasher all by himself and S loves to help, even if he is over zealous and shouldn't be handling glassware. So I moved on down to the basement, but not before I conquered the trip to the dump...

Digression: Please, those who live in suburbia, be thankful for your trash collection service.

I'm really going somewhere with this, please be patient... After the dump, I wandered to the real target of my day: The Basement. Ours is above ground, don't you know? It has been a shambles after the water receded from the last flood (March 2008) and really needed some attention today. I made a little progress before the rain began to fall which brought L and MM in from the garden where they had pulled up the beans and corn preparing for a late crop of corn! And S had risen from his nap in a foul mood! Great. Now I'll never get this basement even remotely organized!

Never fear, MM is here! After a moments rest he began searching for something to do that would be helpful. So he made his way to the drums. They are heavy and cumbersome but none the less, good for what they are used for. Behind bung number one, we found pinto beans, vegetable oil, rice, salt and mesquite seasoning. No problem. 105 Pounds of life sustaining food. Good enough. Behind bung #2 we found pinto beans, vegetable oil, rice, mesquite seasoning, wheat grain and brown sugar. Now for the big surprise, behind bung #3 we found pinto beans, vegetable oil, rice, mesquite seasoning, wheat grain and brown sugar.

The total number of pounds of food we found was staggering: more than 350 pounds of food.

So, we are somewhat prepared now. There's only one problem with half of this food: Those 1.25 gallon bottles of vegetable oil all three of them. One per container... They were busted. One less than the others, but all none the less busted! Yes, we now have in our basement 350 pounds of food half coated in vegetable oil.

The question I pose to you: Do you see our problem? and, what would you do with it all?