My fridge died. I just now noticed that it is room temperature in there.

My question is, if the hamburger stirfry I had in there smells and tastes ok, is it ok to eat it? I hate to throw it out because it was extra delicious ;).

I did eat some tonight, before I realised the problem. Luckily I didn't feed it to anyone else! I will let you know if I die from it.

I have now moved the remainder to another fridge, so it's eating it tomorrow that I am wondering about.

PS: Should I reheat it in a fry pan or oven, not in the microwave, for more even and/or higher heating?

You cannot go by taste or smell to detect unsafe levels of bacteria. If you notice those things, the food has been bad for a while already.

Dang--I'm sorry you have to deal with this!

I forgot the second step of posting last night. This was my reply to Lindalou:

No, it was not cold at all. Now I am hoping I don't get sick from what I already ate before I noticed the fridge problem. OR the swig of spoiled carrot juice that alerted me.

Luckily there is very little immediately-perishable food in that fridge -- it is mostly seeds, lotions, produce, cheese, stuff like that. Oh, dang, the figs are probably moldy.

>Some food borne illnesses can take weeks to incubate in your gut.

Can you tell me more about these, so I know what to watch out for? Or just names and I can google :).

--

After I went to bed, I remembered I had also eaten fish oil and clam juice out of there. Scary!

I had some kind of histamine response last night -- burning pain all over-- which decreased some when I took a prescription dose anti-inflammatory. It's still with me now, though. The pain kept me awake most of the night. It's like what I get when I eat gluten, but without the other symptoms. But there was no gluten.

My immune system just does not like something in that stew of microbial toxins I ingested with my meals yesterday :/. No barfing or other GI stuff though, which I guess is good.

Today's project: Throw out, clean out, move frozen foods out, thaw fridge overnight and see if that cures it or if I need a new fridge.

The fan works fine. I left it open overnight to try to thaw any ice.

Now cold air does go into the fridge compartment, though I wonder if it could be more. The fridge gets sort of cold, but not very. After having it on its highest setting for 3 hours (small fridge), it was about 42 degrees. It used to freeze stuff when NOT on high.

I spent a fruitless couple of hours trying to locate its defrost timer, as a troubleshooting website advised me. And then trying to find a manual for this particular model online. Sigh.

I sat down and thought about it, and thought, 'It's getting somewhat cold. It's unlikely that it has TWO problems, ice plus something else.' (William of Occam is my friend :).

So I am leaving it open for another night or two to see if it thaws more, and then I am thinking to leave it ON overnight, to see if it is just slow to get down to temperature. If neither of those work then, yeah, I guess it does have two problems.

Suggestions are VERY welcome!

Oh, ok! The troubleshooting guide was talking about two hours, but maybe they did not mean fully cold. It has been a looooong time since I started with scratch with a fridge. I don't remember how long this one took when I first got it.

Last night was cold (ambient temp) so I think I should let it warm for another 24 just to be sure.

Thanks for your help in thinking through this :).

I turned it on this morning. It's now down to 52 degrees -- started at 61.