Friday, February 20, 2015

Back In The Saddle

For any newbies out there, let me explain: back in 2008, I started cleaning out my refrigerator and posting the contents on this blog for the sole purpose of making everyone else in the world feel better about their own housekeeping abilities.  I consider it to be a sort of community service.  I am, if you will, the Melinda Gates of refrigerator philanthropy.

Well, I've been slacking off for a while, but today I did it - I cleaned out my fridge.  And I have the photos to prove it:



Above are the primary culprits.  From the left!

1. Broccoli - These forgotten veggies are the innocent victims of my February vow to eat something green every day. They bear silent witness to the futility of all human aspirations.

2. A completely empty pickle jar - this is in keeping with what is apparently my children's motto: Why recycle something when you can just shove it back into the refrigerator instead? Or their other motto: Mom will do it.  Leave it for her.

3. A jar of Kirkland-brand salsa old enough to have white fuzzy stuff growing on it - I swore off this salsa the first time we tried it, ages ago.  So I have no idea what it is doing in there. DON'T BUY IT - it's awful.

4. Worcestershire sauce with an expiration date of 2013 on the label - and I wonder why no one accepts my dinner invitations...

5. A jar of tahini that ALSO expired in 2013.  You know, I had high hopes for this particular food item - I distinctly remember planning to make all my own hummus because I had an ever ready supply of tahini in my fridge.  This scenario never came to pass. Where DOES a dream go when it dies? Into my refrigerator, apparently.

6. Far right, bottom, is unidentified - it might be some sort of salad dressing.  Or someone's science experiment. Or both. Atop that is horseradish with NO expiration date, so I am not going to risk it. Safety first!

7. Front and center, a container of excellent deli mustard imported all the way from NJ, after my father's unveiling.  That's right, that would have been last October. And, as those of you aware of my condiment problems already know, there are several other jars of mustard still in the fridge.

8. On top of the mustard is what seems to be some moldy hot peppers, provenance unknown.  Gross.

So, I removed all of the above, and the refrigerator was STILL overcrowded.  I investigated further and found the following:


Really, kids?

See? This is what my family does.  It puts teeny tiny bits of leftovers (pancakes, top, and meatloaf, bottom) in the largest containers possible, out of sheer laziness or maybe just to mess with my mind. I rectified the situation thusly:


Now, was that so hard?

Sometimes it takes an expert, you know?

So now my fridge looks a little more manageable, but I didn't even attempt to clean out the 2 drawers at the bottom (a quick glance revealed a few apples, bought in early December, and some grapefruit I bought from the high school band member next door back in November) or the dreaded cheese/deli meat drawer.  There is only so much humiliation I can take in one post.

Feel better now? You're welcome.

12 comments:

  1. Ha! These posts always make me laugh and really do make me feel better about my fridge situation.

    Have you tried roasted broccoli? It is so much better than broccoli served any other way. Just toss it in salt and olive oil and so minced garlic if you are feeling wild and put in a 350 degree oven for 15 - 20 minutes until it starts to get brown and crispy. YUM! My daughter and I love it like this. My husband will even eat a little this way and that's saying a lot! I even enjoy Brussels sprouts this way.

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  2. Empty pickle jars are a serious pet peeve of mine. I mean really. How can you not know you took the last pickle?

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  3. I'm dying over here...and I do n't even do the cooking; which means the Hubs is in charge of the Fridge. Usually...

    Guess what I'll be doing this weekend?

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  4. I love you.

    We had a three day weekend last week. I was all "Oh the fridge is going to be so clean". Here I am on Friday night, a week later. Fridge is disgusting. We have the same Ikea containers, BTW (blue lids). And mine are equally abused.

    Should I do this on my blog? Should we make this a "thing"???? I'm sorely tempted. There is so.much.ish in my fridge.

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  5. My guys save the not-quite-empty pickle jar for its brine, because nothing says "let's drive mom crazy" like cutting up cucumbers and thinking they will turn into delicious pickles in 2 days.
    Now that my husband has (mostly) taken over the shopping, we often have big empty spaces in our fridge. It's lonely in there.

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  6. We have an empty pickle jar problem too. Or, more commonly, a pickle jar with a single pickle in it that no one will eat.
    It SERIOUSLY never occurred to me that Worstershire sauce might have an expiration date. I use it so infrequently that we will have the same bottle going for years. Yikes.

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    1. Heh...some days I go through the fridge and just eat all those lonely pickles so I can get the jars out there!

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  7. This morning my husband poured bacon grease on top of what he thought was more bacon grease. It wasn't. It was months' old bourbon caramel sauce that I hadn't thought to label. I wonder if we could all find cures for diseases in our antique refrigerator finds.

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    1. There has got to be a Nobel Prize in there somewhere!

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  8. As my daughter told me when I ask if she wanted to save the leftovers after a dinner at her house, "I can either throw them away now, or I can put them in Tupperware and keep them in the fridge for two weeks and then throw them away

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  9. My husband and I have a 'no poaching' rule for restaurant leftovers. Which is fine for me, because I take myleftovers to work for lunch, and very rarely ever have anything around long enough to go bad. My husband- not so much. I'm at the point right now of telling him to either eat his leftovers, or I'm declaring open season. (There's a rather tasty-looking half calzone in there I've had my eye on.)

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  10. I am cleaning my fridge this morning! Actually, I'm 2/3 done but I needed a break. We're twinS!

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