Adventures with the Refrigerator

I know tonight's blog is posting late, but I have a really, really good excuse. Tonight I decided it would be really good to go though the refrigerator and get rid of any food that was no longer edible. Now, for those of you that know us, we usually don't have a lot of extra food, Steve can be a human vacuum cleaner, so I expected one or two items will need to be tossed, if that...

Boy was I surprised when I took the time to LOOK in the refrigerator. It was downright embarrassing. For starters, I had cooked a pot roast a while back (do NOT ask how far back "a while" is...) and had not bothered to put the leftovers in a plastic container. Under normal circumstances, pot roast does not last 24 hours in this house. Apparently, I had cooked too many of them within weeks of each other and we had both kind of gotten pot roasted out. So, I suspected pretty strongly that the leftovers in the crock pot were going to be relegated to the trash can.

What I didn't expect, and have now learned a very valuable lesson, is DO NOT use solid colored plastic containers when putting away leftovers. Rather, if you do use a solid colored container, be sure you LABEL the container before shoving it in the refrigerator. What both of us did not do (for me it was out of fear...) was peek into those solid containers for fear that something was going to reach out and touch me... So, as I am nervously looking in the refrigerator at all of those solid colored containers (many of them are re-used butter tubs) it was with much trepidation that I slowly opened each of the containers.

Imagine my relief when I opened one of the first containers to discover that lo and behold, there was butter in the container...just like the label indicated. Then I started hoping that we had lots of containers with a little butter in each. I knew that to be an unfounded hope, but it did keep me strong enough to carefully peek into the next curious container. Well, I was not as lucky as the first container, there was something in this one that LOOKED like more pot roast leftovers, but I wasn't entirely sure. Once the smell wafted out of the container, I quickly decided that whatever it was, the mess was going in the trash.

This exercises continued for almost an hour (I didn't know the refrigerator could store that much food) before I finally ran out of containers. That was when I found a pot, pushed waaaay back in the fridge, and pulled it out. In it was some strange, yellow runny stuff. I could not identify the contents of this pot and was very concerned. I called Steve in to identify the runny stuff. He thought I was crazy, but did identify the slime as some potatoes au graten. Again, I have no recent recollection of WHEN we had potatoes au graten...the whole thing looked like it liquefied....By this time, my eyes were watering and my nose had left for greener pastures... This next step will cause you to really question my sanity. I actually took all the really icky food out of the containers, and placed the ick in a trash bag to to out in tomorrow's trash. I didn't want to waste those wonderful plastic containers that I had been hoarding.

So, I managed to empty all those plastic containers (and the one pot) into a trash bag. Then, once we got all that stuff out in the garbage, I was faced with the daunting task of cleaning all of those lovely plastic containers. You may have some idea of how bad the kitchen smelled as I was feebly trying to get those containers cleaned. I did finally manage to scald myself and the plastic clean and now am happy to report that the kitchen now smells fresh and clean once again.

Tomorrow I will review my success in cleaning all those containers. The only rule I have regarding tossing containers is if the lids are broken beyond repair and if the containers have become deformed from the rotting food inside. I did have one of those, the container started out as a tub, but once I took it out of the fridge, it was some Picasso-looking shape. Needless to say, I didn't even DARE to open the lid to that and quickly tossed the whole thing into the trash bag. I am glad that the trash pickup is done automatically now. A truck drives by with pincer arms on the side, the pincers pick up the trash can and dump the contents into the garbage truck. I would have otherwise pitied the garbage men if they had to take the lid off the trash can to dump the contents into the truck.

Hopefully this brief article caused you to smile, either in sympathy or in horror, but all the same, I hope you had fun. Tomorrow we will wander back onto more serious subjects...

Until tomorrow...