Today’s prompt : List the items in your fridge you never use.
I am passionate about cooking, and experimenting with new recipes. I can easily spend a few hours on a weekend watching the cooking shows on PBS absorbing new techniques. (For the record, I’ve haven’t watched the Food channel for several years now, since they went to a “reality” based platform. Bring back Jamie Oliver and the like, please!)
As a result of constant learning and experimentation, my larder and fridge have a plethora of odd ingredients. One of my son’s former girlfriends used to love to pull out my spice drawer and just gaze at the dozens of bottles and containers, agog that anyone could have that many spices in their kitchen at their disposal. However, the downside is that I often have items that get used once or twice in a recipe and then linger on for months in the cabinets or fridge. I once had a jar of pomegranate syrup that stayed so long in our refrigerator that it could have filed for legal residence in the State of California. So every month or so, I do this massive clean out of the fridge, getting rid of items that are long in the tooth or leftovers that my husband swears he will eat, but get pushed to the back of the fridge to die lonely and sometimes rather nasty biological deaths.
On account of the holidays, our refrigerator is full at the moment, stuffed with leftovers including a bag of Schnecken rolls, leftover chicken wings and bread and assorted odds and ends of snacks we ate on Christmas eve. Most everything is identifiable and has been used in the last month. Except a jar of Aioli–Habanero Mango Aioli, no less. I hate Aioli, and I’m pretty sure the spouse isn’t a fan as well, so I am confused as to how this made it into our fridge. Did someone sneak into our house some night and deposit this unwanted item in the door of our ice box? Was it a neighbor, who like dumping a surfeit of zucchini from their garden on a porch, had one too many jars and gifted it to us unbeknownst to my husband and I? Was there some weird tear in the time-space continuum and it was transported from an alternative universe fridge where this actually tastes good?
The world may never know. Some mysteries are meant to remain, unsolved.
skullwoman 