As The Food Turns

All you folks linking over from SpinDyeKnit, the post you are looking for is here. But feel free to stick around for the fridge follies. Or type in "knitting" in the search bar up there to the left.

[If you don't understand why I am showing you pictures of moldy food, please read the post that explains it all. After you read it, you still might not understand why I'm doing this (my husband sure doesn't); but at least you can say you tried.]

Okay, let's get started already. You know, that avatar of mine is haunting me. It makes me think, what would Laura Petrie blog? And then things get really weird...

For sure, Laura wouldn't be showing you the inside of her refrigerator, now would she? But today is Wednesday, and I have an obligation to my fan(s) to catalog what is being thrown in the trash this week. So, here we go:

On the left, there, in the Pyrex container (which I love, love, love because it comes with a storage lid) are the remains of our crockpot basil chicken (a recipe I got from Saving Dinner, I believe), which I served with bowtie noodles smothered in homemade pesto. See? Sometimes I cook my family a real meal. And Larry wasn't even here! I cannot figure out how we had any left over, as I served this for dinner 2 nights in a row (as I said, Larry hasn't been here) and then for lunch the day following.

And everyone liked it! Strange, but true.

Atop the container is the bagged carcass of a store-bought roasted chicken (look, Larry hasn't been here for over a week, all right?) that I saved to make into chicken soup. But I forgot. So much for assuaging my guilt over spending 5 dollars for less than 3 pounds of chicken (I weighed it on the produce scale in the store, because I wanted to see exactly how much money I was wasting).


Where were we? Oh, yes - here is the weekly Gladware stack. The bottom container has some leftover scrambled eggs (from the weekend when my parents were here); the next one up is filled with leftover dough for apple dumplings (David was a little overzealous and doubled the recipe). Above that is a bowl (that should have a plastic storage lid, but why use the matching lid when you can waste some saran wrap instead?) with leftover apple-dumpling filling. Sayonara!

Wait - does "sayonara" mean good-bye? Or hello? I don't know. Oh, well.

In the middle (front) is some unwanted hummus - it's texture was off, and so was the flavor. We're not buying this brand again. I'm giving you a close-up so that none of you make the same mistake. I am sure you regulars are not at all surprised to see the half an egg sandwich wrapped in blue saran wrap on top of the hummus. What can I say? We love our traditions.



Finally, the big bag in the center back is filled with apple peels and apple cores. I bought a bushel of apples (only 35 dollars - that comes to less than 80 cents a pound) at the Farmer's Market, so we've been busy all week making apple dumplings and apple crisp. But I hate to see all these healthy, unwaxed peels and cores go to waste.

Luckily for me, I have a friend here in the middle of suburbia whose husband insists on raising a few pigs each year. So I've been meaning to get over to her house and let my kids feed the apple remnants to her livestock. It's like a petting zoo, only admission is free and you don't have to pay for special food to feed to the animals. She has chickens, too.

Of course, raising livestock has its complications, like the time she came home with the kids from a play date and saw that the pigs had gotten loose and were running across the road. Have I mentioned that she doesn't really like the pigs? If it were me, I would have been all "Pigs? What pigs? I haven't seen any pigs" when my husband got home that evening. But, no, she chose to enable her husband's livestock addiction by chasing after the creatures and herding them all back into their pen.

Recalling this incident suggests to me a new book idea: Men Who Raise Livestock, And The Women Who Let Them. It would be a must-read for any woman who has ever found herself feeding chickens on her way to Target or defending her husband's pig-raising proclivities to a suburban homeowner's association. Every wife who has found herself inexplicably experiencing a suburban livestock lifestyle would find solace in its message that she is not alone, that there are others out there like her, struggling to lead normal suburban lives despite her mate's insistence that Green Acres is indeed the place to be.



No one's written it yet, I hope.