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: Freezer Edition

Joss left this comment on last Saturday's fridge post:

"I really enjoy your fridge clean-out posts... I was just wondering though - have you ever considered freezing leftovers and sauces/soups? We inevitably have too much and freezing helps them last longer (although it can clog up the freezer sometimes)."

As a matter of fact, I have considered that. I even have in my freezer a number of foil pans containing dinner leftovers that, in theory, reheat easily. But when I do decide to have a freezer dinner, somehow they never taste very good. At least, no one seems to want to eat them.

I also attempt to save odds and ends that would be useful in future meals. In fact, there are various and sundry items I have thriftily frozen and then forgotten in our kitchen freezer, aka "the black hole." You can see some of them below, to the right. (By the way, I had just managed to snap this picture when the whole tower came tumbling down.)

Let's take it from the top, all right? We have an Amy's frozen burrito, which is strange, as I have never, ever bought one of these overpriced uber-organic fast foodstuffs myself. I think it may have ended up in my freezer during my friend's kitchen remodel last June. Feel free to comment if you want it back!

Next are 2 baggies of bread cubes. I don't know when I put them in there, and I have no idea what I meant to do with them. Which may explain why they are still here...

Next up - frozen strawberries, handpicked by the children in May of 2007. Yup. I guess I was saving them for a special occasion that never happened.

Below the strawberries is a cylindrical container of ice. Why? Because our electric snow-cone maker demanded ice in this exact shape. We became mindless slaves to this tyrannical appliance, as evidenced by the bag of cylindrical-shaped ice blocks below:


What is really odd is that I no longer even own said snow cone maker.

Below the ice (first picture) are 2 containers of cooked pumpkin from Halloween 2007. Again, that special occasion for which I was saving them must not have occurred. Does anyone know if this stuff might still be good? I put an awful lot of work into it.

Holding everything up is a gladware container of what I think was canned tomato sauce. I must have frozen it after using half a can for dinner one night, just as Joss recommends. And then I promptly forgot about it.

Joss, does this answer your question?

Victory

After 4 tries on sock #1 and 2 tries on sock #2 (and if you think about it, I really knit 3 pairs of socks here), I finally have this (over there to the right) to show for all my efforts.


This was the first pair I have knit from Sockotta, and I am desperately trying to ignore the fact that the socks are, as I type this post, making my ankles itch. Nope, I just won't think about that at all.






I was also victorious (albeit 3 days late) in my weekly fridge cleaning. And not merely victorious, but downright creative, actually - I present to y'all Still Life With Leftovers:



Nice, isn't it? The dying flowers add a certain je ne sais quoi to the usual stack of Pyrex. Van Gogh, eat your heart out.


P.S. And for those of you who just have to know, from bottom to top it's chicken in black bean sauce, potroast (maybe), black bean soup, scrambled egg, and cooked pumpkin. I'm sure Ma Ingalls would have made some sort of a delicious stew out of all these ingredients before they went bad; I bow to her superior subsistence skills.

As The Food Turns

[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.]

Look! No egg sandwich! From the bottom up, I present to you the contestants in this week's refrigerator clean-out:

1. my spectacular dill potato salad (I don't even remember making this, which makes me suspect I need radiocarbon dating to determine how old it is);
2. 6 cucumber slices sitting forlornly in the bottom of a Gladware container;
3. some almost-finished hummus (Trader Joe's brand this time, rather than that feeble impostor pictured here last Wednesday);
4. leftover apple oatmeal that I forgot to force on someone for snack;
5. and some way-past-its-prime parsley lying limply atop it all.

You know what I did immediately after taking this picture? I tossed all these items into the trash can! Isn't that a good idea?

Too bad I didn't think of it last week. Instead, I put all the discards right back into my refrigerator because I was too tired/lazy to wash out the containers that evening. And then? I forgot about them. So imagine my surprise and dismay when I pulled the following from my refrigerator this afternoon:Look familiar? At least I did toss the egg sandwich...

If you are wondering (as I am) why my refrigerator didn't stink to high heaven from housing that chicken-carcass-in-a-bag (yum!) for a whole extra week, I have no answer for you. I do know that my friend with the livestock problem will be happy to hear that I took up valuable refrigerator space saving that bagful of apple cores and skins for her pigs. Plus, a bonus:
This week's peelings, for their porcine dining pleasure...

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.

As The Food Turns

[A few newcomers were puzzled last week; 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.]

It's Wednesday, the day of the week when Suburban Correspondent flings the doors of her refrigerator open wide and invites the entire world (or, at least, 300 people) to see what has gone bad in her refrigerator lately. It's like a train wreck, folks; you just can't help looking!

Here we go, friends - the throwaways this week. You'll see that we have a few of the regulars with us today - the sacrificial egg sandwich there on the right, the homemade salsa - along with some newcomers to the fold. On the left you see the usual assortment of Gladware (actually, a piece of Tupperware is on the bottom of that pile, a lone survivor from the days when I thought I could actually keep my fridge both organized and color-coordinated). The contents of the containers range from some cut-up homegrown tomatoes to orphaned spaghetti (does anyone else run out of meatballs and sauce before they run out of pasta?) topped by some pesto (homemade by David) gone bad. Hmmm...Pesto Gone Bad...maybe I'll send that to Dave Barry as a suggestion for the name of a rock band. I'm sure he's just dying to hear from me.

The big metal bowl center stage (with the rotting peach posing demurely in front of it) contains yet more homemade salsa (also made by David). Here's a close-up:


I assure you, 9 days ago it was simply delicious.

On the right, we have yet another stack of past-their-prime comestibles. Three watermelon slices are on the bottom. I remember considering forcing one of the children to eat them, even though everyone was full; because I knew if I put them back in the fridge, they were doomed. Alas, I ignored my instincts; and these innocent watermelon wedges died a slow, lingering death (along with the 8 cooked carrot rounds in the container above them). Oh, well, at least neither the carrots nor the watermelon suffered alone.

And on the top, of course, is our sacrificial egg sandwich of the week. Looks like Elijah still isn't hungry, folks!

[For you newcomers who are still puzzled as to why you are staring at someone's half-eaten lunch, let me tell you: you can blame the Germans.]

As The Food Turns

It's Wednesday! Time to clean out the refrigerator and start with a clean plate. I mean, slate. Whatever.

I'm not doing too badly, folks. I've been making my kids eat the leftovers more (not cooking helps to facilitate that), and it shows. Sort of. Still, despite my best efforts, on the right there we have 2 Gladware containers of leftover "enchilala duff." (Named by one of our toddlers, can't remember who...) That's black beans, corn, salsa, canned diced tomatoes, and tomato paste, all thrown together in a crock pot and then dished out in taco shells to a semi-appreciative crowd. These particular leftovers must have gotten lost behind something else; otherwise David would have finished them off in lieu of eating our normally carnivorous fare. They are accompanied in the leftover category by a small amount of pot roast (glass dish) that has passed its "eat by" date. Not too bad, not too bad...

Atop the roast is a jar of maraschino cherries a neighbor found in her cabinet and pawned off on me. (Believe me, when you have 6 kids, everyone brings you their extra food.) I love maraschino cherries, at least when I get one or two on top of a milkshake or ice cream sundae. But a whole jar? Not so much. They start tasting poisonous. What does "maraschino" mean, anyway? "Bad for you"?

Next to the cherries is a full container of margarine. I was about to use it when (luckily) Theo walked into the kitchen and pointed out to me that I had bought the kind he is allergic to. So I put the lid back on and jammed it into my black hole of a refrigerator, thinking I would give it to a neighbor when I had a minute to spare. By the time I rediscovered it, there was a hole burned in the lid by the refrigerator bulb (does this happen to anyone else? Please say yes), so I felt funny about giving it away. I mean, what would I say? "Here, have this margarine. Don't worry about that hole in the lid. I don't think any plastic melted onto the margarine itself. And margarine's sort of fake anyway."

On the left, this week's piece de resistance: 2 jars of salad dressing that I made for our 4th of July BBQ. One of these jars has already been featured twice in this blog - once when I first removed it from the refrigerator, and again when I discovered it on my counter 2 weeks later. It's the Rasputin of refrigerator discards. It will not die.

Knit Me A River

Wow! I should have quizzes more often. I got almost as many comments about the mummified bananas as I had on the bra post. (There's a joke in there somewhere, but I'm not going to go for it.)

Yes, the unidentified object was (were?) 2 bananas, looking as though they had been bought sometime in the Pleistocene Era. I can't understand how they reached the petrified stage they were in without their oozing all over my counter first. Usually, it's the oozing that tips me off.

So, thanks to everyone who played! And a special thanks to "A," the first commenter, whose comment made me go over to YouTube looking for a rendition of "Yes, We Have No Bananas." I knew the song existed, but I had never heard it until today. And now I can't get that darn tune out of my head.

As I said, thanks. Thanks a lot.

I managed to attend Knit Night last night; essentially, I walked out the door as Larry walked in from his 3-day management retreat, saying, "Retreat this, buddy!" (Okay, no, I didn't; but I wanted to.) There I was able to discuss with other women a problem that I didn't realize many of us married knitters share: a spouse who thinks that, when he speaks, he should have our full, undivided (i.e., not knitting) attention.

In other words, all those evenings I spent sitting cosily in the den with Larry, knitting away on some project or another and listening to him talk about what is screwed up at work? Didn't count. Because I was knitting. Even though I was conversing with him throughout, asking questions, and only occasionally interrupting the conversation to pick up a dropped stitch or search for a lost needle...

Talk about not being on the same page, huh? Larry doesn't understand that the only way I can listen to him (or anyone else, for that matter) for an extended period of time is by knitting. If my brain isn't focusing on the knitting, it darts around thinking about laundry that isn't done, the kitchen that needs to be cleaned, meat that needs defrosting for the next day, etc. And when it does that, I am really not paying attention.

This misunderstanding stems from the fact that men don't seem able to do two things at once. For instance, when Larry is on the phone, he needs to retreat to a perfectly quiet room and focus on his phone conversation. Isn't that cute? Ya wanna know what I do while I am on the phone?

1. Cook
2. Clean
3. Wipe butts (not mine, though)
4. Settle fights
5. Change diapers
6. Answer e-mail
7. Knit (but, of course)
8. Fold laundry
9. Correct math homework
10. Yell at kids

If I can do all that, I am definitely capable of knitting quietly while carrying on a conversation with my spouse, don't you think? But someday, if Larry runs off with some non-knitting hussy who sits and gazes soulfully into his eyes every time he utters a word, y'all will know it's my fault. And I can live with that.

Going bananas here, can you tell?


(And, yes, I have noted that Audrey Hepburn is most definitely not knitting as she chats and laughs flirtatiously with Humphrey Bogart. But they don't have 6 kids together, either.)

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).

Bloggy Book Club Week #3

I can't believe none of you caught it, but there was a fourth bottle of salsa on the refrigerator door last week. I just noticed it yesterday. This whole exercise in cold storage investigation is starting to remind me of those picture games in Highlights magazines. You know, the ones where they ask, "Can you find 15 [whatever] in this picture?"

4 bottles of opened salsa. Sometimes, I amaze even myself.

Well, it's taken over 16 years; but I finally had to take a kid to be fitted for eyeglasses today. I'd begrudge Theo the expense, but he never did require braces; so I'm still getting off fairly inexpensively with him, I believe. Also, he only required 10 minutes to pick out a set of frames. A teen girl (any teen girl) would have required at least 3 hours of agonizing deliberation before settling on a pair of frames that she would later claim she "looks ugly" in.

Larry has persuaded me to try a family camping trip (tent, no camper for us) for a few days this month with all the kids. I only agreed for 2 reasons: we can't afford anything else, what with fun items like root canals and eyeglasses clamoring for a piece of the household-income pie; and we're making Anna come along, which should provide quite a bit of amusement.

Well, 3 reasons, actually; let's face it, the trip will be fun to blog about. Only, I don't have a laptop to take along. And I strongly suspect that buying one for the occasion would negate any money-saving aspects of this particular family vacation.

So I'll just have to take copious notes. Or maybe there will be a public library with internet access that I can sneak into from time to time. Air-conditioned, of course.

***********************

Book Giveaway #3 - Leave The Building Quickly, another book of memoir-type essays by Cynthia Kaplan. What can I say? It's great. She does have one essay in which she defends her atheism; but it is more shallow than offensive to any God-fearing reader. The other essays all entertain with her trademark sense of self-deprecating humor, and I guarantee you'll be looking up a YouTube rendition of Brown-Eyed Girl after reading Chapter 2. That's what I did, and here it is:




Rules are as always: Leave a comment telling me you are interested in the book. The winner gets to review the book on his/her blog and then pass it on to one of their readers.

Oh, wait - deadpan, not self-deprecating. The Amazon review describes Ms. Kaplan's humor as "deadpan." What the heck does that mean, anyway? Whatever - it's a good book. I'm going to reread it before I have to give it away.

Salsa, Salsa, Everywhere; And Not A Chip To Eat...

[I am being besieged by people coming over from this website for German aupairs. I can't read what it says about me, but I'm guessing it is laughing at what we Americans have in our refrigerators. Anyone know German who can translate for me?]




You know, I think I will have a little trouble explaining to Larry why over 40 people are demanding to see pictures of the inside of our refrigerator. [Actually, come to think of it, I'm having a little trouble explaining this phenomenon to myself. The blogosphere is indeed a weird place.] So I'm going to try to post these now, before he comes home and catches me. Here you see the full picture. Try not to take it all in at once - it's a little overwhelming.




Next let's get a close-up of the dreaded bins of moldering vegetables. I think the specials this week are cilantro, carrots, and (in the back) an onion or two. Note the gunk behind the bins. I have no idea how that gets there. And, if you look closely, you can see the dirty glass shelves above the bins that are even now making MamaHenClucks sick to her stomach. I warned you not to look, sweetie.



Let's see, what else have I got for you? Oh, yes, let's look at the condiments. My family's addiction to condiments, as I mentioned in yesterday's comments, is killing me. Here's the door, where all the condiments (in a normal family, that is) should fit. Do you see the blank space on the top right? What the heck is that for? If I had another shelf there, the situation in the main part of the refrigerator wouldn't be so dire. As it is, the condiments that don't fit on the door are displaced onto the main shelves where they get knocked over and make a mess. Luckily this usually happens way in the back and I can ignore it. Oh, and do make a note of those 2 bottles of wine there on the bottom right. It is possible, MadMad, to have a surfeit of both wine and condiments.


Because some of the condiments aren't easily visible (due to being shoved to the far back of our fridge), we end up with even more overcrowding when certain children open a second jar of whatever it is they can't find. While I was rummaging around in the fridge during this photography session, I discovered 2 full open containers of mayo. Great. I moved both to the front so you can see. Oh, and see that head of cabbage at the top right? It's not long for this world. I have no idea what it is doing there.


Here is a close-up of the top shelf. Please note that big jar of chopt garlic next to the cabbage. It should be on the door. Its present location guarantees that as soon as someone reaches for that chipotle salsa behind the Canada Dry, the garlic will crash to our tile floor. (The only part of my kitchen floor that gets washed regularly is the section directly in front of the refrigerator.) Oh, and check out the jar to the left of the mayo, below the garlic. That's another jar of salsa. And that bowl to the left of the jar? That's homemade salsa. I guess we didn't already have enough in the fridge.

Is this making sense? Oh, wait, I just spotted a third jar of salsa (Newman's Own) hiding shyly behind the garlic. Anyone got a craving for Mexican?


Now I'm trying to find the picture that shows the huge jar of applesauce shoved all the way to the back of the refrigerator. Hmmm...here it is! See it? All the way back there behind the mushrooms that are sitting on top of the cabbage? What are the odds I'll be able to remove the mushrooms from the refrigerator without knocking over that chopped garlic? Wait...were we talking about applesauce here? Sheesh, I already forgot about it. I don't think refrigerators should be made so deep.


So, I hope that little tour made all you blogging voyeurs feel better. Please do not suggest that we invest in a second refrigerator. We already have one. Yup. And it's full. And, no, you're not getting pictures. I've got to draw the line somewhere. I have my pride.

Oh, and I have no idea why all you blogging former English majors weren't falling all over yourselves to tell everyone where yesterday's blog post title hailed from. Anyone willing to take a guess? You can win an open jar of mayonnaise.

I Saw The Best Minds Of My Generation Destroyed By Madness

I don't think people understand how even the simplest maintenance tasks can be daunting for those of us less gifted, shall we say, in the arts of housewifery. One of my friends refused to come to the pool with us today, because, as she said, "I have to clean out my refrigerator. It's so full, I can't fit anything else in there."

[I assume all of you use this criteria for refrigerator cleaning, also? If not, move right along, nothing for you to see here. Go visit your cute little Martha Stewart chat groups, all right?]

"Can't this wait until later?" I asked. "I hate going to the pool by myself."

"No, this is a major job. I have to do it, and I have to do it now." This last was uttered with the grim determination of a fireman heading into a burning building.

"Okay," I said, "I've been there. How about you wait until tomorrow and I'll come over for moral support?" [Yes, I am a good friend. The best, in fact...] "I've seen it all, so far as food mismanagement goes. Nothing will surprise me."

"No, tomorrow my father-in-law will be here; I can't do it in front of him." Oh, yes, the perils of household mismanagement and its attendant shame! "He'll be sickened by the amount of wasted food. I'm wracked with guilt every time I look in my frig."

Who knew that a household appliance could be the source of so much angst? But she's right - there must be a hundred things in my house that scream at me, "You're doing it wrong! What is your problem?!" The piles of unsorted mail on the kitchen hutch, the stray socks and underwear littering the floor in front of the washer and dryer, the laundry basket full of I-don't-know-what that has become a permanent fixture in my bedroom - they all bear silent testament to the fact that, as far as running a household with the calm efficiency of a June Cleaver or a Donna Reed character, I am an utter failure.

"You don't understand," my friend continued. "There are strawberries in there so old that they look like they're covered in cream sauce." Silence. Then, the sound of weeping.

"Hey, wait a second. Pull yourself together," I begged. "Old food isn't worth this. You went to law school, babe; you can't let this bring you down."

More weeping.

"Look," I said, feeling desperate. "I want you to know, you're not alone in this. I'm going to take pictures of the inside of my refrigerator and e-mail them to you. It's a sickening sight, but if it would make you feel better..."

"You'd do that for me?" she sniffed.

"Hey - what are friends for?"

Closets of Darkness

[I'm also posting at MidCenturyModernMoms today. About...middle age...]

Wow. I didn't realize what a project I had taken on. The closets in the kids' rooms were a nightmare. The toys, and the clothes, and the assorted flotsam and jetsam of stray pencils, toys from the dentist, birthday party loot bags, and trash - the horror, oh the horror! During our move last year, I didn't organize the kids' possessions properly; and things have been getting worse ever since. Apparently, the trauma of relocating kept me from even attempting to stay on top of the kid chaos for the past 12 months or so - even with my bag of Flylady tricks, I felt unequal to the task. So, while I kept my kitchen sink shiny and my bathrooms wiped down, everything else in the house has devolved into utter rack and ruin.

I feel like Rip Van Winkle, waking up one year later, looking around and saying, "Where the heck did this mess come from?" I did manage to get everyone switched to their new rooms today, and the younger 4 are all excited, because it's fun to sleep in a different place. Listening to them, you'd think we had relocated to halfway around the planet. Then we went to Target - which, incidentally, has a wonderful air conditioning system - and bought Rachel an early b'day present from Grandma and Grandpa - matching twin patchwork quilts with pretty sheets for her and Susie's beds. So their room is looking pleasingly girly, which makes me feel a lot better. Just don't look in the closet...for the love of God, save yourselves.

Theo will be crashing on the sofa until we manage to haul the humongous filing cabinet out of his new room. (I don't really understand what is in it, as it certainly isn't holding our regular household files - those are overflowing a milk crate in our den, right next to the computer desk.) And then I will still have the pleasure of getting rid of/stashing all the boxes of crap we dumped in the family room. It's enough to make a girl contemplate arson.

Somehow, in between shoveling out closets and desk drawers, I found time today to tidy up and reorganize around here, too. I've been coveting what I call the "live" blog roll I've spotted on other people's blogs. So now (ta-da!) I have one! Check it out. Between that and my "Shared Items" widget, I am feeling positively tech-savvy these days.

Who knows? I may even get up the nerve to mess with my template. Ever since Memarie Lane mentioned that every time she reads my blog, she gets a craving for a Creamsicle, it's been making me sick. I hate Creamsicles.

Can't Beat Yesterday's Title

Well, Larry and Anna left sometime before dawn this morning; my birthday is over; and we have an end-of-homeschooling year picnic to get to (and make a dish for) today. So you can read my maunderings over at MidCenturyModernMoms; or maybe you just need a little break from all this blogging stuff, too. Go ahead. Enjoy yourselves. I'm going to spend most of the next 6 hours trying to dig out from under the detritus that accumulates when I goof off for a couple of days. Let me tell you, it's scary. Laundry, toys, dishes - they are all colluding to make me hide under the bed for the rest of the day.

But it's dirty under there, so I won't. I swear, no one knows how to work a Swiffer around here except me.

In Which I Get Militant

Okay, blame the Minnesota Matron for this one. She started it with her amusing post about, um, explaining to her husband the need for a housekeeper once she starts working fulltime this fall.

Excuse me, did I say "starts" working? I meant, once she gets a new full time job which just happens to be outside her home. Because, you see, she has already got full time employment - she just doesn't get paid for it. And I, with my advanced mathematical skills, have already figured out that if you have one full time job, and then you get another full time job, you then have two full time jobs. (Yes, I know, I'm brilliant.)

Unfortunately, most people seem not to have realized this (about the jobs, I mean, not my brilliance). Oh, maybe the early feminists did, since they were always insisting that once a woman went to work, her spouse would have to pick up half the work at home. But what these good women did not recognize is that the spouse generally already had a full time job himself. Maybe these women just weren't good at fractions; but three full time jobs divided evenly between 2 people equal 1 and a half jobs each. Which is a lot of work for anyone, and particularly if there happen to be children in the household.

[Of course, there were those whose solution was to warn women not to have kids; or not to have too many of them. But I will save my rant on that subject for another time.]

So, if both spouses want to work outside the home, great! (I know, you all were just waiting for my permission.) Just make sure that there is someone else doing the needed work at home, so that your lives don't fall apart. It's no fun working all week, just to spend weekends catching up on laundry and grocery shopping and housecleaning. It's not fair to ourselves, it's not fair to our kids. And our insistence on trying to do things this way makes it clear that most of us do not believe that women who take care of their homes and their children full time already have a job.

But we do. And the pay sucks.

[Edited to add: Some people seem to be interpreting this as another blast in the Mommy wars. It isn't. I'm a uniter, not a divider. We all work. Some of us get paid. Some don't. Some of us find our jobs fulfilling (paid or not), while some of us don't. We all struggle to find time for ourselves. We have more in common than not. So cut it out.]

No Kidding

I had to clean the stove today, since I can't even turn it on without setting off the fire alarm; so I thought I would make the task fun by taking before and after pictures. Well, I must be a lousy photographer; despite my best efforts , the after pictures really do not look much better than the before ones. Go figure. Maybe it is my camera's idea of an April Fool's joke.

I hate April Fool's Day. I have never understood what is so funny about making someone else (as in, um, me) feel like an idiot. Not that I resent it or anything, Another Gray Hair; but if you do end up actually pregnant at some point in the future, enjoy that morning sickness, okay? Humph.

I took the younger kids to the library this afternoon; I only had to pay 25 dollars this time to get my account thawed out. If any of you are keeping a running tally of how much money I have paid to that lovely institution this year, please do not share it with me - I don't want to know.

Remember the other dad Larry spent 24 hours with on the Boy Scout camping trip? The one whose son became best friends with David? Turns out Larry learned neither his last name nor where he lives. This incident just may explain why Americans resorted to torture* to get information out of detainees: the interrogators were male and had no idea how to gather information in a normal fashion.

*If you are one of those benighted individuals who doubts whether waterboarding is technically torture, I suggest you go experience it; then come back here and make your report. Make sure to bring pictures so we can see what a great time you are having.
[No one splits legal hairs better than our current Administration, I must say.]


And yes, I did let my toddler poop in her pants while I wrote this post - how did you guess?

Odds and Ends

I have seen the light! I cleaned my oven with that self-cleaning mechanism thingie, and it worked! I wish I had tried that years ago. Actually, I think I did try it years ago, and something caught fire. But this time I managed not to burn the house down, and I didn't have to die a thousand deaths of embarrassment when the Pampered Chef consultant (salesperson, Larry insists on correcting me - he likes to call a spade a spade) opened my oven door to put in the pineapple upside-down cake.

Yesterday evening I held a Pampered Chef fundraiser at my house for a family with a sick baby. (See? Sometimes I do think about someone other than my own sorry self.) My friends and I all sat around my floorless kitchen and looked at fun new cooking gadgets (Suds Pump! Handy Chopper! Nesting Mixing Bowls!), while my husband sat in the living room clutching my credit card and wouldn't let it go. Thanks, honey. I would like to point out here that I've been using a butcher knife for the past year which has a broken handle. Larry claims he can find me a really inexpensive one after Christmas. I proved myself to be extremely forbearing and mature by not bringing up his recent Home Depot purchase.

This morning all the kids had a dentist appointment. At 8:30. And we made it. Thank you, I am amazing. As I've mentioned before, somewhere, we have the most efficient pediatric dentist in the world. Dental cleanings for 5 kids, x-rays for 2, sealants for one, check-ups for all, and we were still out of there in under an hour. All that, and balloons, too. I never get a balloon from my dentist.

Motherwise, a very nice person whose blog posts reassure me that I may just live to like my teenage daughter again, has invited me to tell everyone 8 interesting things about myself.

1. I am very short. As in, people will say to me, "Wow - you're short." Perfect strangers.

2. I didn't like children at all before I had my own. I regarded them as an expensive hobby taken up by people who had nothing better to do with their time than to talk about poop and to wipe gross runny noses.

3. Bugs disgust me. Our house is overrun by centipedes and the sight of one makes me want to puke. Some of them are so large that they could be mistaken for a small mouse, if seen out of the corner of one's eye. And when you step on them, their legs keep wiggling. Excuse me, I have to go throw up.

4. Okay, I'm back. I used to be intelligent. Now I am the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Just ask my teenage daughter.

5. I have no ambition. I have no idea how I ever would have earned a living if I hadn't married and had kids. Career goal: kept woman.

6. I wish I had started having kids earlier in my life than age 28, so that I could have a dozen. You have 4, or 5, or 6 kids, and perfect strangers are still making those stupid jokes: "Don'cha have a TV?" "They know what causes that now!" "You're a real pioneer woman!" But go ahead and have 12 kids, and people are stunned into silence. Which would be just fine with me.

7. My 2-year-old got poop on my coat sleeve today (don't ask). This incident further convinced Anna (my 14-year-old) that she never, ever wants to be like me.

8. I like to stick my head in the sand. I have 5 adults and 12 kids coming over in about an hour, and I'm sitting here blogging, rather than attending to the mess which is my house. Bad idea.

Day 15, and I'm still in it! Go, NaBloPoMo!

I Don't Want To Live Like A Refugee....

Library, thrift store, bakery, Target, bagel shop, bookstore - can you tell I didn't want to be in my own house yesterday? I needed to escape the torn-up kitchen and the refrigerator in my dining room - you know, when the going gets tough, the wimps run away. That's me.

Luckily, Theo wasn't put off by the mess and made us a decent dinner (stir-fry chicken with walnuts - excellent); luckily, because our sodium counts are going through the roof, what with being on the road all weekend and being kitchen refugees yesterday and Monday. I do like that boy. So now I just have to get the house ready for guests this evening. Which means, I take the myriad items lying around the main floor and throw them either upstairs or downstairs, close all the bedroom doors, wipe down the powder room, yell at all the kids non-stop not to leave their stuff around, and voila! I'm company-ready.

Martha Stewart secretly wishes she had my touch.

Maybe I should clean the oven, too, since a perfect stranger will be using it and may not understand why I leave charred bits of food on the bottom as burnt offerings to the kitchen gods. Oh, and the inside of the refrigerator is pretty gross. But I'll just blame the kids. There. Problem solved.

I don't know how Dawn had the nerve to let those TV cameras in, but I love her for it.