Happiness is knowing that there is now NOTHING in the family refrigerator that will give anyone in the family a bad case of food poisoning.
I went trolling for something to eat an hour ago, and suddenly felt in the mood inspired driven by the hell that is our frigo to examine the expiration date on each and every item. Especially the entire top shelf, which has been chock full of an assortment of condiment jars (some of them with Russian labels on them) ever since I moved in here at least two years ago (and probably much longer). The stuff at the back was the stuff I was most concerned about because of course it never seems to get rotated to the front, and as happens in everyone's fridge, you tend to forget what's even back there.
THIS was what I had to throw away:
There were THREE open jars of salsa with old dates (the contents of one jar had turned a muddy GREEN, and last time I looked, isn't salsa supposed to be a sort of tomato-ey RED? Yeah, I thought so too), and three unopened ones with good dates that got to stay in the fridge. I can't actually remember the last time we had tortilla chips in this house so why do we have all this salsa? The sad part is, 75% of these items will not even need to be replaced.
Oh, in case you were wondering? I think the oldest dated item was something like March 2007. Or was it 2006?
And THIS is our leaner, cleaner and meaner refrigerator... the contents of which are now 100% certified safe for human consumption:
Notice the top shelf, which now has only FIVE items instead of most of what you saw in the "before" photo. And look at all the LIGHT! And the shelves are no longer sticky and crusty. And now we have room to buy lovely fresh NEW food and condiments that will be dated 2012. Plus, the fan is no longer blocked by all those cruddy old jars so the machine will probably work more efficiently. It is a thing of beauty, this fridge.
I never thought a clean, safe and spaciously organized refrigerator would get me so excited. So excited that I would actually post a photo of it for all the world to see. How lame is that?
Afterward, I rewarded myself by making myself a hot dog, which I had all but forgot I'd bought just the other day because I couldn't see anything in that fridge. It was the best hot dog I'd had in ages.
And you think my life in Paris is so fucking glamorous.
