Dream On

I admit it - I didn't clean out the fridge yesterday. My negligence came back to haunt me in my dreams last night (what is it with all these dreams, anyway?). There were leftovers everywhere; I turned on the oven to preheat it and discovered (too late) that there were Pyrex storage dishes full of food in the oven, their plastic lids melting in the heat. Opening the refrigerator, I found single-serving cups of yogurt far advanced enough in the fermentation process to have burst through their foil tops. There was an entire dinner entree that I had no memory whatsoever of preparing. Larry walked into this scene of housekeeping carnage and said something to the effect of, "What is wrong with you, anyway?"

(A side note here: in the dream, I had to yell at David for attempting to save one of the aforementioned yogurts from the trash. His packrat tendencies irritate me, even in my sleep.)

Is there no rest for the weary? Is anyone else out there tormented at night by their daytime housekeeping inadequacies? Inquiring minds want to know...

As The Food Turns...

It's Wednesday, which means it's time to ask: What is moldering in Suburban Correspondent's fridge?

In front, in the foil, we have our sacrificial egg sandwich of the week. As you may recall, we also had a sacrificial egg sandwich in previous weeks. You know how Jewish families leave a glass of wine for Elijah on the seder table at Passover? (Well, you do now.) Apparently, we leave Elijah an egg sandwich in our refrigerator; but he never eats it. Maybe he's not hungry. Or he's too soused on all that wine.

Next to the sandwich, in the blue saran wrap, is a leftover chunk of Rachel's birthday cake, lovingly decorated by Anna. As I have no desire to see my 6 children argue over and then methodically divvy up this one piece into 6 exactly even portions, strewing chocolate crumbs everywhere in the process, I am dumping it tonight. My sanity is worth the food wastage.

And what have we here, next to the cake? Is it...can it be...why, yes, it is 2 jars of salsa. Salsa! Imagine that! The one on the left is empty; and I can't get anyone to eat it the other one, because it is disgusting. El Paso Fresh Mexican Style Smooth Chipotle Salsa - not a crowd-pleaser. Remember, you heard it here first.

On the right, we have a head of cabbage that died a slow, horrible death in my refrigerator (ah, cabbage, we hardly knew ye!), a squishy tomato from I-know-not-where, and a bowl full of something else tomato-ey. But it isn't homemade salsa, because the 2 containers of homemade salsa are still in the frig. They have not yet aged sufficiently to qualify for this weekly feature.

In the back, we have our usual contingent of Gladware containers, containing everything from refried beans remnants to scraps of homemade pizza toppings (from our dairy fest last week) to some left over raisin oatmeal that I had meant to force into my children because I am sick of wasting food. Alas, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak; so I never did follow through on that.

The real question this week is why would there be 2 empty bottles of reconstituted lemon juice in my refrigerator. Why, indeed? Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to discard and cry...

And here, as a bonus, is a picture of some items I found lurking on my counter this evening that you just may recognize: that's right, these 2 items are proud alumnae of this weekly feature! The cashew butter is still here from last week (because none of you slackers told me the proper way to dispose of it), and the 4th of July salad dressing has been hanging around for a full fortnight.

Because I felt guilty getting rid of it.

I'm waiting for someone to knock it onto the floor, I guess; at that point I can clean up the remnants and discard them with a clear conscience. Of course, that still leaves the question of what I am going to do with its identical twin that remains in my refrigerator.

So stay tuned for next week's episode! Will the homemade salsa still be in the frig? Will Suburban Correspondent ever learn how to clean out a nut butter jar in an environmentally friendly fashion? And will Elijah eat his egg sandwich? All these questions and more will be answered next week, in As The Food Turns.

Miscellaneous Doesn't Even Begin To Describe It

I am so proud. This post of mine is number 3 on the page when someone Googles "self scan line idiots." Thank you, thank you very much.

And this news item wins my "Too Gross To Finish Reading" prize of the day. I had to read the first paragraph or two, because I just didn't believe the headline meant what I thought it meant. But now I just don't want to know any more.

An anonymous commenter yesterday sent me this link to an article in a Kansas newspaper about what is inside people's fridges. (I think I've tapped into some sort of cultural zeitgeist here.) Most of the women interviewed seemed to have fridges like mine. But there was one overachiever who is so proud of how her refrigerator looks on the inside that she bought a model with a transparent door, just to show it off.

What can I say? There walk among us some who are not human.

[Excuse me while I go look up "zeitgeist." Hmmm.....yes, I think that was the right word; but using cultural in front of it may be redundant. What do you think?]

The Hotfessional saw my 3 bottles of salsa and raised me 12 (yes, 12) bottles of salad dressing. I happily bestow the title of Condiment Queen on her deserving vinagrette-ness. If I knew how to make one of those nifty blog buttons, I would do it and send her the code. She also (feeling bad knowing that she had bested me in the condiment competition) granted me an award that looks very pretty, but I have no idea how to show it here. It says "Brillante Weblog - premio 2008," which may or may not translate to "Brillo Blog - Prematurely 2008." That doesn't really make sense to me, but that's what the blogosphere is all about - you can say anything you like and it doesn't even have to be coherent.

Actually, that hits a little close to home, now, doesn't it?

But what about the kids, you ask? Here I am this week, posting about news articles and the contents of my refrigerator and finances and knitting, and where the heck are the children all this time? Are they foraging for themselves among all those rotting vegetables and bottles of salsa, looking in vain for something to fill their poor little tummies while their mother sits blogging?

(Actually, while I was arranging the food items on the counter for yesterday's photo shoot and yelling at Rachel and Susie to stay out of the picture and stop touching the gross zucchini, for heaven's sake! - Anna said, "You know, this is getting a little weird.")

Happily, everyone has been well-fed this week, despite my out-of-control blogging habit. Theo (our milk-allergic kid) is away, so we've been having a dairyfest of sorts - homemade pizza Tuesday and today; ice cream with the not-quite-jelled peach jam yesterday; homemade whipped cream to go with our blueberries on Monday. We've done everything short of making a butter sculpture, actually.

Oh, and today we had an ice-cream cake (as opposed to our usual homemade, dairy-free ones) for Anna's birthday. We're celebrating a day early, as she is off to a big amusement park with her youth group tomorrow (our birthday present to her). And I just realized that this year is a once-in-a-lifetime birthday for her - because the date is 08/08/08. Is that cool, or what? If only she had been born in the year 2000....

(For those of you who don't think that is really neat, I bet you're the type of folk that don't get all excited about "perfect square" days, either. You probably don't even care that the next one is coming up in 2009, on March the 3rd.)

It is also a special birthday, because it marks exactly 2 years since Anna was stolen by extra-terrestrials and replaced with an alienated teen clone. Anna, honey, we wish you were here! We can't forget how you used to smile at us all the time and how you would greet every day like a present waiting to be opened. We sort of miss that.

(Sigh.) I had better stop now before I get too maudlin. Well, more maudlin...

Is "maudlin" a word? It's looking funny.

Back Slowly Away From The Gladware, Ma'am, With Your Hands Up

Welcome to a new feature - the Wednesday Fridge Follies! Each Wednesday I clean out my refrigerator (and I use clean in the loosest sense of the term here) and take a picture of everything I end up throwing away. This exercise in public humiliation should make me take a good hard look at the amount of waste in our household and cause me to reevaluate our food storage habits, resulting in a smaller carbon footprint for our family and more food for others to eat.

Or, it could just be an exercise in public humiliation, right? So, let's get on with it:

What's in SuburbanCorrespondent's fridge? (with apologies to Holly's fruitbowl)

Not too bad this week, actually. Here we have numerous gladware containers, no fewer than 2 of them containing past-their-prime baby carrots. When I open a bag of baby carrots, I don't want the unused ones to dry up in an opened bag in the fridge. So, smart housewife that I am, I store the remaining carrots in a gladware container full of water, which keeps 'em crisp - a nifty trick I learned while working food service in college. (See, MadMad? That college degree wasn't wasted.)

Where was I? So, now, instead of drying up, the baby carrots sort of rot in the water because, the next time I need some baby carrots, I can't find the container in my mess of a refrigerator and open up a new bag instead.

The container next to the carrots contains some cut-up scallions that I thriftily saved (in theory, at least) for another meal. At least they made it to the cutting-up stage, unlike their sorry-looking brethren above them. That's 2 bunches of scallions I unearthed from the meat drawer, folks. Looks like I had something yummy planned! Sure wish I knew what it was.

[David, in a fit of compassion, rescued these 2 bunches, chopped their wilted tops off, and replanted the bulbs outside on our deck. 3 cheers for David!]

Moving on....to the left of the carrots is a glass dish half-full (or you can call it half-empty if you like) of homemade sloppy joes. These are a family favorite, so I cannot figure out why there were any leftovers (unless, of course, this particular container was pushed to the back of my black hole of an icebox and wasn't recovered in time). Atop the sloppy joes is a (you guessed it) gladware container full of peas and rice. I don't even remember what meal this was from. Out it goes!

To the left of the sloppy joes are 2 containers of cream cheese. This is curious, as we generally don't allow open containers of dairy products in our refrigerator (due to Theo's milk allergy). We must have treated the kids to bagels and thought the leftover cream cheese was too good to waste (at least, not without letting it go green in our refrigerator first). Yuk. I don't remember when we had bagels, either.

Peeking out from behind the cream cheese is a jar of homemade Italian salad dressing that we made when I had some guests over, which was...let's see....the 4th of July! 3 weeks being the statute of limitations of abandoned homemade dressing (says me), it's time for us to bid arrivederci to this particular item. Besides, we have another jar of it in the fridge. I guess I made too much.

See that big metal bowl behind the scallions? It is full of peach skins. We made peach cobbler yesterday and the skins we peeled off tasted so good that we saved them. Because we would feel bad tossing something that tastes good. So we waited until today, when they all turned brown....

There's an interesting story behind that metal bowl. You see, I spent years and years picking up used Tupperware from yard sales and thrift stores; but what I really hoped to find were some stainless steel bowls complete with storage lids. They were the holy grail of my bargain-shopping for over a decade until, finally, a couple of years ago, I admitted defeat. I forked over Larry's hard-earned money for a brand-new set of 3 bowls with lids.

I loved those bowls. I admired their shininess, their usefulness (good for cooking and storage!), and the way they nested so space-savingly in my cupboard. Our relationship was, of course, too good to last. Only 2 months into it the lid for the largest bowl (pictured) went missing. Gone - just like that, leaving a hole in my heart that couldn't be filled. I never found it. Not even when we moved last year and I was sure it would turn up, under the stove or behind the refrigerator.

And now, now... the lid to the smallest bowl is gone, also. Off to join its brother, I suppose, wherever plastic storage lids do go, leaving their owners bereft and hopeless and wrestling with recalcitrant saran wrap.

But I digress. It's time to stop mourning and move on. Behind all the food is a yellow plate with 1/2 an egg sandwich that Susie left over at lunch. What do you say, folks? Should I wrap it in foil and pretend that someone is going to eat it later and then suffer the embarrassment of taking a picture of it one week from now? Or should I just toss it now?

As a parting note, I would like to point to my culinary accomplishment of the week. It's not all rotting food and moldy veggies here, folks. Sometimes something good happens in my kitchen. And this week, it was this stuff to the right: 8 jars of homemade peach jam (well, 4 jars of jam and 4 jars of not-quite-jelled peach something-or-other) and 4 quarts of homemade tomato sauce (plus 1/2 a quart which is...um....somewhere in my refrigerator).

In Which I Chastise Ungrateful Grown Children

Today, I must confess, I'm mad at Sue. And not just because she's funnier than me. I'm over that. Really. But, geez, Sue, you're a mom, right? And yet, you're inviting all your readers to make fun of the food their mothers fed them? Maybe you haven't been a mother long enough. Maybe you still entertain the notion that as long as you make healthy, fun meals, your kids will not have any complaints about how you feed them. Right? Am I right? After all, if a kid's unhappy, it's got to be his mother's fault.
Ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh, I slay me.

Well, let me tell you, Sue, just wait. Yeah, that's right...just you wait. There will come a day when you realize that no matter what you feed those darling children, someone will whine and complain. There will come a day when, every single time you put a plate of food in front of one of your children, your stomach will clench up in a knot of anticipatory dread; because you know that within 3.4 seconds, someone is going to be voicing their unhappiness with the menu du jour.

You see, Sue, it's not us (the moms); it's the kids. You can make everyone's favorite breakfast, and someone will be sitting there crying because she didn't get her favorite spoon. You can get them the junkiest cereals known to man, all those cereals both you and I pined for as kids; and they'll complain because it isn't the boring healthy cereals we hated. Do you know why your mom handed you the bag of brown sugar with your Wheaties? Because she wanted y'all to just shut up and eat. That's right. And if giving you early-onset diabetes was the only way she could get you to ingest some fiber, then that's what she was going to do.

And those peanut-butter snacks she made for you? Those sounded pretty good to me! Hey, peanut butter has protein in it, so double points for her! In fact, tell her to send me the recipe, okay?

Seeing as how your mother had nine children, I'm not surprised she locked the refrigerator. Especially since one of those kids (not naming names here, or anything) had a propensity to eat raw hot dogs...I mean, what else could she do? And I'm sure locking the fridge cut down on the between-meals mess in the kitchen. This idea is sounding better and better to me.

As an aside, that raw hot dog incident hit uncomfortably close to home for me. Back when Rachel was going through her toilet-stuffing, stuffed-animal-decapitating phase, Theo went into her room one day and said, "It smells like hot dogs in here."

And I said, "No, it doesn't. Don't be ridiculous. I've had my eye on that child all day." Because I was trafficking pretty heavily in denial at that particular stage of our lives.

But he insisted, "It smells like hot dogs in here." After a brief search, he discovered the half-eaten pack of frankfurters in her desk drawer. But she wasn't the type to just cram a few raw hot dogs in her mouth in a hurry - no sirree! We weren't dealing with just any amateur food thief here. The remaining hot dogs were ensconced on a pretty plastic plate, with a dollop of mustard on the side. With them in the drawer were a knife and a fork and a cloth napkin.

Say what you like, that kid has style.

So I say, if locking the fridge works for you, all you moms out there, then go for it. And if your grown kids later try to accuse you of traumatizing them and giving them bad eating habits, just laugh that sort of hollow laugh all we older moms develop and ignore the ungrateful wretches. Because we all know who traumatized whom.

And, Sue, go apologize to your mother. I don't blame her one bit for waking you up singing "Good Morning To You" when you were a teen. Not one bit.

Rain, Rain....

Lord have mercy, it's raining. And cold. And I don't know what to do with the children. We have already visited Target today, where I bought them a couple of really cheap toys in a pathetic attempt to get through the afternoon. Then I bought us one large popcorn to share and had the nerve to ask the guy for 5 free cups for water. I'm quite the big spender. I'm surprised he didn't assume I was skimping on the kids' food to support a drug habit and call the police.

But if Child Protective Services does show up at my door to investigate charges of malnutrition, I can redeem myself by showing them that Susie actually eats her carrots now, instead of sneaking them onto Brian's plate. Yet another gustatory miracle brought to you by the supernatural powers of ketchup. It's what's for dinner.

One more hour until bathtime. Maybe I'll suit everyone up and send them out to play in the rain. That should impress the authorities.

Miscellaneous This and That

I started feeling worse and worse yesterday; so I attempted to take it easy around noontime by sitting in my beloved floral Ektorp and cuddling Susie in my lap. Unfortunately, she was emitting this constant whining sound that reminded me of nothing so much as a dentist's drill. (Why was she doing that? Ha! I know not why.) So I went up to bed (where Larry was already napping) and lay down (yes, we are both pathetic) and Susie followed me. Then she heard someone knocking on the front door, which resulted in her running downstairs to shout, "Mommy and Daddy are in the bed!" to whomever was at the door. Cool. As if our neighbors didn't already think we are a bit too frisky, what with the 6 kids and all...

How often do you think I get invited to a grown-ups only social event? Almost never? You're right! So it would stand to reason that I would be too sick to go yesterday evening to our neighbor's house where she was having a little farewell dinner party for another neighbor. A real dinner party, where you drink cocktails before the meal and sit at a table to eat your food and (if you're my husband) stay until midnight laughing and chatting with the other attendees (all grown-ups).

Not that I am jealous or anything...

And that cauliflower I managed to serve the kids on Friday? Made me sound pretty good, huh? It probably appeared to the casual reader that we always have a fresh steamed vegetable (with ketchup) at dinner. Wouldn't that be nice? But, in reality, it's usually just a bag of baby carrots thrown on the table as an afterthought (eat them or no dessert!), or some carrot and onion in whatever stir fry Theo has thrown together. Bagged salad makes an appearance every once in a while. The kids' favorite dressing - French, of course, because it has ketchup in it.

We do have a special family ritual here - every other week I buy the healthy veggies at the commissary, and then, 2 weeks later, after they have decomposed sufficiently, I throw most of them out. Sometimes I treat it as a homeschool science experiment by demonstrating to the kids what mold looks like (biology!). Or I can list it under earth science by calling it compost.

It's a learning lifestyle, that's what it is. Mostly the kids are learning how I waste good money on food we don't use. And I'm learning that you can lead a kid to cauliflower, but you can't make him eat (at least, not without a lot of ketchup).

If I were really blog-savvy, I would insert a YouTube video here of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young singing, "Teach...your children well..." But, alas, I'm not blog-savvy; and Larry wants the computer. G'night, all!

Rachael Ray, Not!

I'd like to post, really I would. But considering it took me several minutes just to get to this page, it may not be a possibility. Not before midnight, anyway. This old set-up of ours is a tad temperamental. If I click on one browser tab and then change my mind and click on a second one before the first page loads, the computer gets annoyed and sort of freezes up and won't do anything. I guess it doesn't like it when I can't make up my mind. Or when I talk to it too much. You'd think we were married.

Even the keyboard is slower. It hates me.

I've been compensating for the less-than-pleasurable computer experiences by knitting more. Which activity is way more productive and doesn't make my husband worry about what I'm typing and who I'm "talking" to. I've started a pair of mittens (in the round) and a sweater (!) for Rachel. I don't really know what came over me, as I have never knit a sweater before. I didn't bother checking gauge, either - if it's too big, she can wear it next year; too small, and Susie can have it. There's a definite advantage to a knitter having numerous children of various sizes.

I'm working on finishing the second sock (go me!) of a pair, and I think I will start a scarf, too, just to keep busy. Because I don't have enough to do.

I outdid myself at dinner by making almost everyone cry (not Larry, though). The new vegetarian entree I made upset Brian greatly. Brian is the quintessential meat-and-potatoes sort of guy, a trait I usually find charming, but not when I have a migraine. David (the vegetarian, the one I made the meal for specifically) didn't like it and was crying because he was hungry and I was annoyed. Rachel cried because she wanted the leftover noodles from last night's potroast, but she didn't want the meat, and I said no. Susie cried just to keep everyone company. I finally quit the scene entirely and went upstairs and took a 2-hour nap. When the going gets tough, I run away.

I am never going to cook anything ever again. The hell with them. They can eat yarn.

She Said, He Said

So, I had to do our monthly commissary shopping trip today (that's the military version of a grocery store) and I sent the boys to do some chores before we left. A few minutes later, forgetting they were still working, I said, "Okay, everyone, shoes on, let's go!" Whereupon Rachel (5) marched to the top of the basement stairs and yelled, in her very best boss-the-boys-around style,

"Brian! David! Get your shoes on! We're going!"

And Brian (7) bellowed back, "Rachel! I'm doin' the laundry!" in an exasperated, male, give-me-a-break voice.

Gee, I wonder where they picked up those methods of communication?

It was funnier if you could hear it. Larry and I laughed until our stomachs hurt.

In other news, I spent 560 dollars on food today. Did you?

And, we have more gray stripes on our living room wall. We needed to argue for a couple of hours over whether Larry had inadvertently switched the sample-paint-can lids, an argument which necessitated painting Misty and Gray Screen (or what we think were Misty and Gray Screen) directly next to what we know were Misty and Gray Screen (are you following me here?) to see if they matched. This is not a healthy exercise for any marriage.

We have yet to decide which color to paint the kitchen; it's hard to pick the right color without the tile floor in place yet (not that there is anything wrong with not having a floor in one's kitchen) (ahem). Let it be known here that I was perfectly happy with the kitchen we had originally; it was painted a cheerful apple green, with an ugly yet serviceable linoleum floor. But Larry suffered the childhood trauma of growing up with a kitchen decorated in a 1970's-style avocado color, which rendered him allergic to any shades of green in a food preparation area. We all have our issues, I guess. His are just weirder than most.

In short, it's hard for me to imagine that there are people who enjoy the process of painting and renovating their homes. To me, it's more agonizing than...than...well, than knitting. And way more expensive.

My time is running out here - at midnight my blog turns into a pumpkin and NaBloPoMo is over. Thanks for listening to me every day for an entire month - I think it's taken some of the pressure off my husband to actually pay attention to what I'm saying. So he thanks you, too.