Fridge Follies

Only 10 days have gone by since my last refrigerator purge, and here I am, at it again!  Faced with the scene to the right, I realized I would have to act quickly to avert a chilled foods disaster.  Never one to shy away from reality, I dove right in.

Please note that I have an apple problem.  Not only are those 2 bins filled, but there are also two (count them, TWO) 1/2 bushel bags of apples lying on my kitchen floor.  We did attempt to make a dent in this bounty by cooking up homemade applesauce in the crockpot yesterday.  After peeling and chopping approximately 16,000 apples (which yielded a pitiful 3 quarts of sauce), we were left with two almost full bags of apples still lying on the floor in front of the pantry.

In other words, Apples 1, Suburbancorrespondent 0.  Alas.


I've found it pays to clean out one's fridge more often than, say, once every 6 months.   This exercise in domestic responsibility took me a mere 15 minutes (minus the photography sessions).  What did I find?  Well!  Feast your eyes below:

Yum!  This, my friends, is what happens when you trust perfect strangers that you meet on the Internet.  Jennifer Jo, over at Mama's Minutia, raved the other day about a sweet-and-sour lentil dish she had discovered at a potluck and subsequently prepared for her own family.  Even her husband, an avowed lentil-abstainer, gave the dish a thumbs-up.  Or so she claimed....

Upon reading this testimonial, I jumped up from my computer, grabbed the bag of lentils that always seems to be hanging around in my pantry, and immediately prepared them according to her instructions.  Only, because I was so sure that I could trust Jennifer Jo, I doubled the recipe.  So now I have about a quart and a half of lentils to try to pawn off on the vegetarians next door.  Wish me luck.

Yes, Jennifer, I did act boldly by adding sliced carrots.  I thought the meal would need a little color.  Particularly since I was planning on serving the (brown) applesauce for dessert.

I also found the items over there to the right.  Perched atop the pile of Pyrex is a bottle of acidophilus which expired in September of 2009.  No, I do not know what my problem is.

The glass dish on top contains rice.  But not last night's rice, left over from the lentil debacle.  David was busy preparing fried rice with that.  So this particular specimen must be older.  But neither of us remembers cooking it.  Meaning, someone is coming into my house and leaving old rice in my fridge. 

Makes sense to me...

The other two dishes contain grilled chicken (from Sunday) and salt potatoes (same day).  They represent my desperate attempt to prepare some healthy food on the High Holy Day of Candy.  Only Larry and Anna and I ate any.  The younger set eschewed my nutritious dinner offering in favor of Twizzlers and Rolos.  And who's to say that they made a bad choice?  I mean, aside from our dentist...

Anyway, I consider 5 days to be the max to keep meat.  So I had these for lunch today.  Didn't taste too good, though.  Maybe that should only be 4 days?  Please comment.

So!  Final product there to the left.  Not too bad, eh?  Please note: I've reassigned the celery to the bottom shelf, under the cheesestuffs drawer.  The eggs have been moved to the middle shelf so I can see when I am running out.

I put a lot of thought into these things, people.

The more eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've allowed some Kraft deli meat to infiltrate the cheesestuffs drawer.  I'd rather not let that happen; but it is tough to stay pure in this world.  I did, however, kick out the tortillas that sneaked in there.  And now I can't find them at all.  Alas!

That open jar of tomato sauce on the leftover shelf?  Look for it in the throwaway pile next week.  It is doomed.