We have stocked up on our favorite French vanilla/mocha coffee flavoring for several years when we travel north for the summer. This year was no different.
We ordered our standard six-month supply, they got delivered, and we hefted all six rather large containers into the RV’s overhead bin, then promptly forgot about them.
Yes, I know we could have ordered more later in Minnesota and had it delivered somewhere, but it seemed so much easier to just have it delivered to our Arizona address.
All was good until we pulled out the second container. It seemed a little different with less shifting of ingredients, but I didn’t think much about it until opening. It seemed that all five remaining containers had melted and hardened in the Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas heat! Hard as a rock, hard as brown sugar left out with the bag open!
My husband chipped away at it for his coffee, finally dumped it into a garbage bag, and pounded it with a hammer. I, on the other hand, just bought two new small-sized coffee flavors at the grocery store.
Moral of the story? The overhead bins get hot! Things can melt and harden. Perhaps another moral: Don’t stock up a six-month supply of anything in an RV!
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RVT1226
Get Keurig style Pods. You can use a pod machine, or a manual one and don’t have to worry about exposure to weather. The pods have all kinds of coffees and Mocha’s.
And you can also get adapters that let you use your favorite grounds in them, as well (some makers even come with the adapter!). My wife and I keep a percolator (stovetop), a single-cup maker that uses pods, and a small multi-cup drip maker in our camper. Hey, we have the room, and we’re prepared for any possibility when it comes to coffee. We’re bona-fide caf-fiends!
When it’s 100+ outside, the inside of the RV is much higher.
This story made me laugh. Thanks for the chuckles. I use our meat mallet to break up our brown sugar.
I stock up on things that don’t melt or go bad in the heat. We live in AZ.
This industrial chemical substance makes ultra processed foods look healthy.
Gaze at that chemical list and throw it in the trash can. It’s basically white paint that people drink.
Yes indeed.
We stay seasonally in our RV in Texas. It stays in Texas year-round. Two aspects of shutting down in the spring: Removing everything unable to withstand 120F, and winterizing the systems. It is not unusual for the area to have its 1st freeze in November. If something happens to delay us and we can’t be there before it happens- 🙁
For what it’s worth, we likewise burn down stocks beginning late summer of anything perishable in our house.
Twice a year we have unusually large supermarket bills.
Watch where you store your Meds (prescriptions or OTC), vitamins and supplements. Also, any durable medical equipment such as diabetes equipment like test strips, continuous glucose monitoring devices, and pump supplies. All these items have temperature storage ranges and sometime humidity ranges. I’ve measured temperatures in interior storage cabinets that are hung on exterior walls. Even with moderate outside temperatures, cabinets temps can exceed storage temp ranges. Also, leaving the cabinet door open doesn’t always solve the problem.
I have a friend who lined all the cabinets (top, bottom and sides) in her destination trailer with “quilted” aluminum sheets, which helped a lot. I’ve never lined mine because I don’t store anything in the cabinets that would be ruined by heat and I keep my medicines in the refrigerator.
We insulate our cabinet with reflectix. It definitely helps keep the heat down.
To soften brown sugar, seems my mother used to put it in a bag or glass jar with a piece of white bread for a few days. Anyone remember that?
I still do that 🙂
Whirl in a Vitamix will turn to powder again.
I use half an apple to soften my brown sugar, but check it. Too long apple could get moldy.
Thank you for the word of warning, Nanci! We stocked up for 4 1/2 months before we left for Alaska in mid-May. So far, so good. We restocked a few things, but of the remaining original stock, nothing has gone bad yet. We focused our hoarding on the things we thought would be difficult to get or unavailable while we were gone. The rest was restocked as needed. Have a great week and safe travels!