My family would tell you that I am the QUEEN OF CONDIMENTS! Actually, that isn’t so. I do happen to have a refrigerator overstuffed with bottles and jars of practically every condiment known to man, but it’s not my fault.
I live in one of those very rare households which have three generations. Everyone who lives here is over 35, including the cat. Each of us have our own quirks when it comes to eating, but my mother and my stepson tie when it comes to who can buy the oddest condiment, take one taste of it, and leave it in the refrigerator for six years.
Last week, I had the pleasure of going to lunch with my youngest sister and one of my nieces. This niece has the most inquiring mind, and she mentioned that she had recently taken a class in kitchen sanitation. She works on the supply side of the food industry, so this is not such an odd class for her to be taking. She suggested that we needed to pitch 90% of the contents of my fridge, and I nodded.
She was supposed to visit today. My mother didn’t raise any slow puppies, so I ran for the fridge and started reading the “sell by” dates on every bottle. I was truly horrified when I discovered the bottle of caramel topping for ice cream passed it’s expiration date in 1999. There was something else with a 2002 date, but most of the rest had expired within the past few months. If it isn’t growing something bleu-green it usually gets to stay for a while.
I found several bottles of salsa, six tubs of various brands of imitation, low fat butter, three boxes of real butter, three cans of black olives and two bottles of green olives that looked really nasty, assorted pickles and spreadable cream cheese. I am proud to say that only one bottle of salad dressing needed to be thrown out!
My stepson is the king of sauces. He will blend eight odd things together to make a sauce to pour over a perfectly good steak. I threw out his Teriyaki marinade. Next to go are Bead Molasses, Brown Gravy Sauce, Hoisin Sauce, Szechuan Sauce, Chinese Style Mustard, and Thai Chili Garlic Paste. I think we need to replace the sesame oil, too.
I cleaned out the veggie drawer, and the lunch meat drawer, but I might need to get tough with the drawer that has blocks of cheese. We have feta, Brie, Irish Gold, smoked Gouda, white cheddar, mozzarella, asiago, Parmesan and cheddar.
I threw out half a garbage bag of left overs. Of course, we’ve had a LOT of people here for the holidays, and as each wave came and went, we had more left overs. Then we came down with colds and nobody had a taste for anything, so all that food sat. Incredible waste. I feel as though we need to make a huge donation to disaster relief as penance for having wasted so much food.
The only ray of light here is that we have single handedly raised the number of people employed in the food industry, trying to keep us in condiments!