Raiding the Fridge

I originally wrote and posted the following on my website over 10 years ago…

Ok… I admit it. I’m a bachelor.

This was confirmed tonight when I went to clean out my fridge. (This was part of a grander cleaning of the kitchen that I do every few weeks whether it needs it or not.) Now, I didn’t go to my fridge expecting to have it confirmed that I am a bachelor, but when I was talking later to a couple friends, and mentioned a couple of things I found there, they both made it a point of telling me that I am.

Here’s a glimpse of some of the things I found. First, something I’m sure not just bachelors will relate with here, this is something anyone who’s had their fridge too packed for awhile to notice that little container in that bottom corner. And by the time you find it you have no idea what it was It’s now a dark greenish-grey color, but what color it was originally?

Now your problem is that you can’t get the stuff out of the Tupperware container because it’s grown right into it… but even if you could, you wouldn’t. Who wants to wash that thing out? Not me. That’s why I stopped buying those Tupperware containers, instead I save the ones from the Cool Whip, or when you go to Boston Market. They’re reusable, and when push comes to shove, disposable.

The item that had one friend calling me a bachelor was the expired carton of milk. So what you ask? Everyone has had a carton expire before they use it. Well this one had yet to be opened. And for the record, it expired Aug 17th, today is Sep 2.

The other item that earned me the “bachelor” tag from yet another friend was the bottle of syrup that had that film on the top of it. I know syrup is supposed to get a film, but it’s not supposed to be the same green-grey color as the stuff from the container in the corner.

Ok, after getting those things, and the other stuff, like the brown wrinkly stuff that used to be lettuce, and the cucumber that was shriveled up to about the size of half a hot dog, (No, it wasn’t the color of a hot dog, at least it was still green.) tossed into the garbage and hauled off to the trash, I was getting hungry.

I figured a peanut butter and jelly sandwich would be good about now. Jif by the way, is not just the one choosy mothers choose… and if you wish to argue the merit of Jif over Skippy… well, then you’ve got even more time on your hands than I do… but drop me a note anyways. All right.. I went to grab the bread and ran into a problem similar to the one I had with the milk. I had barely worked my way into the loaf of bread, and here it was already getting those lil green spots all over it. I would have bit around them, but I wasn’t that hungry.

The bread thing I’ve had a problem with before, and so in a moment of foresight, I had stuck half a loaf of bread in the freezer. Unfortunately, it was also from a time when I was trying to eat healthy, and the bread in the freezer was wheat. As any kid around the world will tell you, peanut butter and jelly just doesn’t taste the same when it’s on anything but white bread. (Preferably Wonder Bread, but any white bread will work.)

While trying to figure out just what I was going to eat, I figured I could use a cold drink. There was a day where I could just walk over to the freezer with one of my old knives and hack off a few chunks of “frost” that was so thick in the freezer, about the only thing that fit in there now was that ice cube tray that I never got around to filling up. fortunately now I have one of those new frost-free fridges, with lots of room, and a special shelf for not just one, but two ice cube trays… both of which I hadn’t gotten around to refilling since the last time I emptied them.

I turned my attention to the cupboard now, as I sated my thirst on some luke-warm coke. Cereal. I have about six boxes of cereal in my cupboard. All of them with about a half a cup left in them. You know how it goes… you get down to that last little bit in the box… it won’t fit in your bowl, so you stick the box back on the shelf and figure you’ll eat it later. But later never comes…. you’re always too hungry for just that little bit of cereal, and the effort of preparing that half-bowl just isn’t worth it. Eventually you end up grabbing one of your BIG bowls and just dumping about three or four of those cereals into it, creating a sort of mish-mash of flavors. There’s the Wheaties, Rice Krispies, Crunch Berries, and Cocoa Pebbles. At least this is what I would have had tonight if my milk hadn’t expired.

So here I am, munching on microwave popcorn, while I’m waiting for water to boil so I can have some egg-noodles… wondering if you can make spaghetti sauce with ketchup. Bon apetite.

originally presented 1997-SEP-09