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.<\/p>\n
Because it isn\u2019t a fridge any more, is it? It\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019t know what it is. I think it was a pickle once. It has since developed a personality.<\/p>\n
The door holds my whole history of cooking ambitions. Three half-empty jars of mustard, each opened because I couldn\u2019t 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\u2019m told a \u201cuse by\u201d date is a serious matter, while a \u201cbest before\u201d date is more of a mood. I find that reassuring, and I probably shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t need an app for that. The cold round my ankles tells me.<\/p>\n
Before anyone writes in, I\u2019m not blameless. I have bought a lettuce with the very best of intentions. I have kept a trifle \u201cfor later\u201d, which is a sentence that has never ended well. And I have, and I\u2019m not proud of this, found something at the back that I couldn\u2019t identify and put it straight back, on the principle that if it hasn\u2019t been bothering me, I shouldn\u2019t bother it.<\/p>\n
Now here\u2019s 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\u2019t even have. So it\u2019s another one from across the Atlantic, like Black Friday and the sixteenth birthday with the red carpet. But I\u2019ll 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\u2019ll eat.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019ll 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\u2019t quite finish. I\u2019ll start today, because it will take me until Sunday anyway. Radio on, lettuce in the bin, shelves wiped, and then I\u2019ll find out what the pickle became. If I turn up a few in-date tins in the cupboard on the way that I\u2019ll never use, a local food bank would be glad of them. Then I\u2019ll make a coffee, the one thing in that kitchen I\u2019m certain is fresh. Provided the milk has survived.<\/p>\n
Anyway, what do I know?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m just a grumpy old man.<\/p>\n
Go on then, what\u2019s yours? Tell me the oldest thing you\u2019ve ever found at the back of the fridge.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[628,361,53],"tags":[629,91,630,364,79,464,80,632,631,425],"class_list":["post-1550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-everyday-life","category-gom-diary","category-humour","tag-cleanoutyourrefrigeratorday","tag-british-humour","tag-fridge","tag-gom-diary","tag-grumpy-old-man","tag-hashtag-holiday","tag-humour","tag-kitchen","tag-leftovers","tag-nostalgia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1551,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1550\/revisions\/1551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}