Kleenmaid Made Clean

Yesterday was clean out the fridge day at our house. It's a good sized fridge, so you can keep pushing opened jars and leftovers further and further back until they're completely out of sight and mind. But it's only when you then start stacking stuff on top of each other that you realize it's time for the fridge clean-out.

I need to remind you that keeping the kitchen is my responsibility, so as much as I would like to, I can't blame LK for anything going on in there. In fact I have to give her credit for suggesting that it was time we tackled the job.

First, some good news. Since I retired and take my lunches at home, our leftovers are getting eaten and there's only the stray Tupperware that escapes my attention. Yesterday, about the only thing we had to throw out was something that looked like ratatouille. Since we haven't had ratatouille in at least 10 years, I can only guess what it started its life in the fridge as.

We also threw out some fruit and berries. Linda had bought them in a splurge of optimism that I might start getting my vitamin C in some format other than a Tom Collins. The fact is that a few years ago I did the South Beach Diet, and found it really helped to lose weight by dropping carbohydrates and fats.

So out went breads, potatoes, fried food and fruit, among other things. Needless to say, the diet ended long ago and I have happily reintroduced sandwiches, potato chips, and other yummy stuff. But I have religiously avoided reintroducing fruit, feeling it shows I am still trying to stay true to the diet. Besides, if I liked fruit I probably wouldn't have needed the diet in the first place.

So yesterday out went old fruit, along with a couple of other things that were still edible but which we both knew were never going to get eaten. That left us with a bunch of jars and containers. I won't bother you with the details, but I do think the exercise left us with some questions about ourselves.

First, what sort of people have five nearly empty bottles of Caesar dressing in their fridge? In our defense, I think it's because we do not need a full bottle when we have Caesar salad, but we are too frugal to throw out the two tablespoons left. So we wait six months and throw them all out together.

Second, can anyone suggest why we had six half-empty jars of black olives? I should point out that Linda doesn't like them that much so it is obviously me who keeps opening new jars. But after the clean-out, the real challenge is to figure out how to tell if they've gone off. OK, I know that the ones with scum on the top should go down the drain, but since the water is black in all the others how can you tell if they are OK?

Third, we actually debated whether a nearly full jar of the African chili sauce, harissa, that had an April 2006 use-by date was still any good. I guess there are two questions here. First, who in their right mind would actually discuss whether something almost 3 years past use-by is OK to eat? Second, since we obviously only used this once that long ago, why did we care?

Lots of questions, but I am too close to the action to answer them. But really good news. We have made enough space in the fridge that we are going out this morning on a major shopping run. I think we'll skip the fruit, but we do need to replace the harissa.