Thursday, June 15, 2017

Cool As A Cucumber

My beloved
Now, I know I've written about my refrigerator (many times) before, all about the mess and the strange things I find there and the over-proliferation of condiment containers. But,seriously, ever since November, when the French door fridge with the bottom freezer (that I have been lusting after for years) entered my life, I've been making a real effort to keep this appliance and the situation therein under control.

So, with my trusty compost bucket handy, I've (mostly) been managing to get rid of rotting produce and moldering leftovers weekly. I've also been waging a (mostly unsuccessful) battle to keep the fridge organized, so that food items don't get shoved to the back and wasted.

It's my life's work, people. Respect it.

What with all this dedication and effort, imagine my surprise this morning to find the item pictured below in my refrigerator, in the plastic bin reserved for salsa and mustard jars (yes, they do have their own section, shut up):


That is, to my professional eye, neither salsa nor mustard; it is, in fact, a cucumber with its end broken off yet lovingly preserved. Now, can you think of a reason for this? I mean, it's not as if someone had started to open a cucumber and then decided they didn't want it but couldn't fit the lid back on, right?

Actually, maybe that was it. I don't know. So I turned to the possible culprits, some of whom happened to be standing in the kitchen at the time. "WHAT IS THIS?" I said, waving the two parts of the cucumber in the air in a threatening manner.

"It's a cucumber," Rachel said. Gosh, I always knew she was the bright one.

"Why is it like this? Who would DO this?" Hey, I wasn't letting this go.

"Um," Larry spoke up from where he was sitting at the table. "That was me."

I stared at him, trying to figure out why a grown man would try to open a cucumber this way.

"It broke," he said.

"So, why didn't you peel it and eat it rather than letting it go bad?" I demanded, because I'm shrewish in the mornings, apparently.

Now, let's give Larry some credit here. He didn't bother to point out that I have probably let more food go bad than has anyone else in the entire history of the world. He didn't pull up all the pictures on this blog featuring spoiled produce. He didn't even walk over to the compost bin and point out the brown, slimy celery I dumped in there yesterday.

No, he just shrugged. "I DID look for tape," he offered. "But I couldn't find any."

Can't argue with that...








13 comments:

  1. Humor! It's what keeps us going.

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  2. My father in law tried to take core samples of his watermelons to see if they were ripe (he is a geologist) then duct taped them back up afterwards. That didn't work out too well apparently.

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  3. Thanks! Great post. Now I'm adding tape to my grocery list.

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  4. Tape... huh. I never would have thought of that!
    My dh grows frustrated with me that I purchase the 3-pack of English cucumbers and let the 3rd one rot instead of eating it. I think of it as a sacrifice to the fridge gods, which would be entirely sensible with a gorgeous fridge like yours.
    My FIL has an entire bin just for mustards.

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    Replies
    1. I find that if I take something prone to going bad and cut it into snack sized, ready to eat form when I get it, it gets eaten. Like, if the celery is washed and cut into celery sticks, I eat it all before it goes bad.

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  5. Duct tape - the male's answer to everything. With a vegan in the house, most of our produce gets eaten. BUT, she'll leave her tupperware with her leftover lunch in the hot car forever. That's fun to find.

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  6. Stick a toothpick through the broken or cut off end of a carrot, cucumber, etc...
    It acts as a lid when you don't need it all. Saw that on a youtube tips video. :-)

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  7. AnonymousJuly 04, 2017

    It BROKE? That is a new one...

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