Apparently today is Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day. I found out by accident over my first coffee of the day, which tells you how long it has been since I opened the thing with any purpose beyond finding the milk. So, in the spirit of the occasion, I did what any responsible person would do. I opened the door, looked inside, and quietly closed it again.
Because it isn’t a fridge any more, is it? It’s an archive. The top shelf holds half a lemon that has taken on the texture of a leather glove. Somewhere in the middle is a tub of leftovers from a Sunday, though I couldn’t tell you which. In the salad drawer, a lettuce has turned to liquid and is now living there with the quiet confidence of a tenant who knows his rights. And at the back, behind the butter, there is something. I don’t know what it is. I think it was a pickle once. It has since developed a personality.
The door holds my whole history of cooking ambitions. Three half-empty jars of mustard, each opened because I couldn’t find the one before. A tube of anchovy paste bought for a single recipe. A jar of harissa I was going to build a Friday night around, in 2022. I’m told a “use by” date is a serious matter, while a “best before” date is more of a mood. I find that reassuring, and I probably shouldn’t.
In my day, the fridge was a small white box with a shelf and a freezer compartment that iced up like the Arctic. Inside were milk, butter and a cold chicken under a plate. Everything else lived in the larder, behind a mesh door, where a piece of cheese could sit on a cool slab for days and nobody gave it a second thought. Nobody needed a day to clean it out, because there was nothing in it to hide. Now we have fridge freezers the size of a wardrobe, American style, naturally, with an ice dispenser and a screen. A neighbour of mine has one that sends a message to his phone if the door is left open. I don’t need an app for that. The cold round my ankles tells me.
Before anyone writes in, I’m not blameless. I have bought a lettuce with the very best of intentions. I have kept a trifle “for later”, which is a sentence that has never ended well. And I have, and I’m not proud of this, found something at the back that I couldn’t identify and put it straight back, on the principle that if it hasn’t been bothering me, I shouldn’t bother it.
Now here’s the part that made me put my coffee down. As far as I can tell, the day is timed to clear space before Thanksgiving, which, as I mentioned last week, we don’t even have. So it’s another one from across the Atlantic, like Black Friday and the sixteenth birthday with the red carpet. But I’ll let this one through. For once, a borrowed tradition that makes real sense. We may not have the turkey, but we do have leftovers. Ours turn up the day after the Sunday roast and are known as bubble and squeak. And Christmas is coming, when the fridge will be asked to hold a ham the size of a toddler, six kinds of cheese and a trifle that someone will definitely say they’ll eat.
So I’ll do it. Not because a calendar told me to, but because a fridge is a small, honest record of how we live: the good intentions, the jar a friend gave us, the leftovers somebody cooked with love and we couldn’t quite finish. I’ll start today, because it will take me until Sunday anyway. Radio on, lettuce in the bin, shelves wiped, and then I’ll find out what the pickle became. If I turn up a few in-date tins in the cupboard on the way that I’ll never use, a local food bank would be glad of them. Then I’ll make a coffee, the one thing in that kitchen I’m certain is fresh. Provided the milk has survived.
Anyway, what do I know?
I’m just a grumpy old man.
Go on then, what’s yours? Tell me the oldest thing you’ve ever found at the back of the fridge.
