Cleaning Out The Fridge

 

   Yesterday one of my tasks was to clean out the fridge. I've been increasingly frustrated at my inability to get to what I need without having to take a lot of things out. I also wanted to see if there were any forgotten leftovers luring in the back. I know that I'm missing at least one container.

   One of the the things that I noticed is that we had a lot of vegetables. One reason for this is that we got a small veggie tray for Super Bowl snacking. There was also a partial container of mushrooms that C bought as a  side  with our Valentine's meal of steak. I found a bag with one dried out tortilla in it. That irritated me because I try hard to use things up before opening a new container. There were two open bottles of store bought pickles. They were consolidated.  I found some rice that was starting to mold and a container of pulled pork that someone had given us. The pulled pork made me a little mad. I don't eat pork and I wish that C would have given it away if he didn't want it. I also found a bottle of refrigerator pickles that I made. I threw it out because I wasn't sure if it was safe to eat.

   The food that we have the most of in our fridge is cheese. This is not surprising as cheese is one of my favourite foods. Much of the cheese we had was from out trip to Door County. On the way back home we stop at two cheese factories and buy cheese. We had a lot of Cheddar and Colby cheese. I found a few packages of Farmer cheese and Gouda cheese. I found a package of Provolone and some Cheddar with garlic and rosemary. I found two packs of shredded cheese and some store bought cheese. The store bought cheese is for cooking. 

   As I pulled things out of the fridge, I cleaned the shelving, something that hadn't been done in awhile. It was so nice to put things back on clean shelves.

   The part I'm not good at when it comes to cleaning the fridge is organization. I can follow someone else's organization. The challenge is that what makes sense to me usually doesn't make sense to anyone else. 

   I put most of what I found back where I'd found it. The vegetables went in the middle. We were going to use those in a stir fry for our evening meal. The cheese was moved to the bottom shelf. I put all the yellow cheese in one spot. I put the smaller amount of white cheese next to it. The cheese I thought we should eat first is in front. 

   One of the things that pleased me was that there were hardly any wasted food. That is something we decided we needed to work on this year. Eating at home more and eating up the leftovers. I was really pleased with C's suggestion of stir fry. We would use most of the vegetables and some of the rotisserie chicken that we bought for another meal over last weekend. We also used a bottle of stir fry sauce that I found in the door. ( I didn't do anything with the door as those were in good shape.)

   Once I was done I looked at the fridge and was grateful. As bothersome as the job may be, at least I have a fridge and food to put in it. Not all people are as lucky.

   I'm sure things will get disorganized again, but for now I'm going to enjoy be able to find things again.