“We Have Food at Home” – A Thorough Inventory of My Fridge
A narrative of the ups and downs of cleaning out my fridge
We’re all guilty of it – letting our fridge get a little out of hand. I can’t pretend I’m not just as susceptible to it as everyone else. Shoving things in the fridge for another day, hanging onto sauces and condiments that are years out of date, keeping mystery Tupperwares tucked away because I don’t want to face the science project inside.
With Thanksgiving coming up next week, now is a great time to tidy up your fridge because you will need that space on Thursday. Keeping an organized fridge and pantry is something I’m very passionate about because not only is it nice to look at, it’ll reduce your food waste in the long run.
I’ve let my fridge get a little out of hand recently. So, to keep us all humble – let’s do an inventory. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of what’s in my fridge.
The Good: Pepperoncinis
A great little fridge staple. Slightly spicy, slightly sweet, a little fruity — so, a bit like me, I suppose. These are great, I always have them, I love them. They are also pickled, which means they’re basically immortal. Great start.
The Bad: Stale Hot Sauce
Here’s what I’ll say – it’s not really that I have a hot sauce problem, it’s that I have a spending problem. As in, my problem is not that I use too much hot sauce (I do) but that I buy more hot sauces than I need. I blame my dad, he has the same problem and always has.
The truth is, once opened, hot sauces start to lose their spice and flavor. And after about a year or two, they’ve pretty much gone stale. A shelf full of hot sauces is really more about the vibe than it is about actually using all those hot sauces, right? Despite the fact that half of these sauces are stale, at least two are several years out of date, and I think one of them might be developing sentience — I’m keeping them all. Sue me.
The Ugly: Tupperware of Surprise
I don’t even know what this is, to be honest. It’s grown a little fur coat for the winter. I’d open it but I worry I’d be releasing some sort of unknowable evil into my home. It’s going in the trash.
The Good: Crispy Leaf Lettuce
I am not a salad eater on most days of the week but I do really fuck with a tub of crispy leaf lettuce. I keep this in the fridge for two reasons. Reason number 1 is for all your usual culinary reasons (other than salad): lettuce wraps, sandwiches, poke bowls, etc. Reason number 2 is the important one though, that reason is that a handful of crispy lettuce leaves is my preferred thing to eat when I’ve been out drinking.
Please don’t be alarmed until you give it a go. Think about what crispy leaf lettuce is – it’s just crunchy water. Crunchy satisfies that primal drunken desire for food that makes a noise and water, well, we’re gonna need some hydration after a long night.
The Bad: The Open Box of Baking Soda
Real ones know what she’s for. An open box of baking soda in the fridge is a great way to neutralize fridge smells since the baking soda absorbs them all. Thing is, you probably ought to swap out your baking soda more than once every seven years, or else what’s the point?
The box even comes with a handy little spot to write down the date you opened it, so you can measure when it’s time for the little guy to retire. How sweet. How cute. How lovely that would be if I hadn’t left it blank and thought to myself “I’ll remember”. Spoiler alert, I didn’t and now this box of baking soda gets his honorable discharge but goes home to roost as a shell of his former self. Wasted.
The Ugly: Red Pepper Pesto
First of all, what the hell was I thinking? I have exactly two food weaknesses and they are quinoa and red bell peppers. So tell me why oh why oh why did I buy this in the first place? It’s still got the price tag sticker on it from the Italian coffee shop/grocery store. 8 dollars??? I bought this for 8 dollars???
Unlike a lot of the other uglies, this guy is still (remarkably) in date but I know I’m never going to use it. Well, hang on, let’s never say never. Let me grab a spoon and see what I think.
Blegh. Yuck. It tastes like red bell pepper. Jesus. How did it come to this?
The Good: Kewpie Mayo
Here’s what I’m talking about. The king of all mayonnaise, our Lord and Savior, our Bishounen, our husbando. Notice me senpai – it’s kewpie mayo in the house. This imported Japanese mayo is the mayo you’ve been looking for. Richer and eggier than American mayo, it comes in a delightful squeezy bottle that never quite stands up straight in the fridge. But it’s okay – I love him anyway.
The Bad: Out of Date Harissa
Damn damn damn. What a waste. My favorite brand of harissa that I have to order online and pay extra to have shipped to me. Worth it because it’s the perfect level of heat, the perfect balance of spice, a slight hint of smokiness, and a grainy almost crunchy consistency. What a shame that I couldn’t use her all up before the expiration date.
For the record, she’s still edible but she has lost her spice, her kick, her spark. She’s not who she used to be and she’s only going to continue dulling. I’ll finish up the jar as a means to honor her and her service to me, but it’s sad to know that she never met her potential.
The Ugly: Dead Kombucha SCOBY
Her name was Diane and she was beautiful. She served so well and so valiantly for so long. She helped me to make more kombucha than any normal human adult could ever, or should ever, want. That was Diane’s sad story: because she made too much Kombucha and I had to stop. From her humble origins, she grew into a monster who demanded to be fed and fed and fed and was never satisfied. There was so much kombucha, I was drowning, I was begging for mercy and Diane didn’t stop.
I had no choice. I had to put her in a Tupperware and stick her in the fridge. I needed a break, I just needed time. For a few months, I fed her some caster sugar and a little oxygen every once in a while. But slowly I forgot her and before long she had died a long and painful death in the 38-degree catacombs of my bottom refrigerator shelf, tucked underneath a package of lentils. I wonder now, could I have ever given her what she deserved? Or was it that she was never going to adapt in the environment she was brought into? Should I have freed her? Set her loose in the wild to survive on her own? Was it selfish of me to keep her as a pet when she was destined for so much more? I suppose we’ll never know.
Hey! If you like this newsletter, you should send it to a friend (or six friends) and tell them about it. Also, I’d love to see what you’re cooking — find me on Instagram (@mother.thyme) and show me what’s for dinner at your house!
I want you to know that after I found not one, not two, but EIGHT cans of black beans in the back of my cabinet I caved and downloaded a fridge/cabinet inventory app so I can look up what I have at the grocery store when faced with a *delightful* sale on, say, black beans.
All this has done is had the app screaming at me when things it thinks are in my fridge are about to expire when they are actually in the freezer and me continuing to buy more black beans to hoard for the eventual end of the world.
I may be a zombie but at least I will have beans.