A friend had a house fire. The roof burned above their apartment.
Parts of the ceiling fell into their apt. but most of their stuff was
not burned, just mostly water and smoke damaged. We helped them salvage
and move their stuff out today. They had a lot of canned food in a
cabinet, which was not harmed by the fire itself or even wet inside the
cabinet. But the fire was earlier in the week and since the weather has
been cold, and there is no roof on part of the house, the house has not
been heated. Thus these canned foods are all frozen. They said to toss
them in the trash, but we decided to save them.

Most are canned soups, and many are the expensive types. Is there any
reason that they should not be eaten? The cans are not damaged or
bulging, in fact they look like they came right out of the grocery
store, and dont even smell of smoke, at least not that I can notice, but
after being in the place all day, who knows.

Besides that, there was some new jars of peanut butter, cooking oil,
cans of beer, household cleaners, lightbulbs, etc. Those I know are ok.
We are wipeing all the cans off with a wet cloth, to remove any smoke
odor that might be on them.

I have a thing about avoiding wastefulness, and this all seems usable
yet. We also got other stuff for helping, that I thought the people
should keep, but I think they are just all stressed out, and all they
wanted to salvege was the big stuff, and toss the rest. For example,
pots and pans, and all their silverware and cooking utensels were frozen
in the plastic silverware tray, and the drawer so they said take it or
dump it. We just brought the whole drawer home. All that needed was a
sink full of hot water and it's good as new. Hell, that silverware is a
whole matching set, better than our odds and ends set that we have.

Now that those cans of beer seem thawed, I think it's time to have a
few....