A few days ago Mark opened
the refrigerator and a jar of sweet relish committed suicide. It leaped off of
the shelf I had squeezed it onto and smashed into a hundred pieces on the floor.
Mark screamed as if he had just witnessed a true horror.
"I just bought that jar of relish, why did you put it there?"
"I just bought that jar of relish, why did you put it there?"
"What relish? You mean that jar of picklelilly? I
tried to stuff it into that mess you call a refrigerator. It was the best I
could do."
As we stood there accusing
each other of causing the demise of the picklelilly, both dogs scrambled into
the kitchen ready to slop up whatever food had just hit the floor. After
shooing the dogs out of the room and cleaning it all up, I vowed to straighten
out the hoarder's hole that is Mark's kitchen and most importantly, the
refrigerator. So that is what I did yesterday. Besides moving the stove and
fridge to clean behind them (found some long lost flatware and a dried up piece
of cheese), then scrubbing down the stove and floor, I cleaned out the freezer
and the refrigerator. Going through the freezer was amazing. It was like taking
core samples in the arctic ice. I found a whole chicken dated from November
2012. Deeper in I found pasteles, a Puerto Rican holiday food from Christmas three
years ago, five packages of frozen empanada dough with various expiration dates,
and numerous tupperware containers with long forgotten leftovers in them. When
I moved over to the refrigerator side it was somewhat the same, only the dates
of expiration did not go as far back since I had cleaned it out about six
months ago. I did find five packages of hot dogs which I think never go bad so
I kept them. I found lots of cheeses, many of which had a blue fur coating. I
also found a nasty, green and yellow goo at the bottom of the produce drawer. Mark's
problem is that he never looks in the refrigerator to see if he already has
what he needs to cook, so what happens is that he brings home duplicates. I
swear to god I threw away at least fifty pounds of food yesterday. Fifty pounds
of wasted food that could have probably fed a village in Africa for a month.
What I didn't find when I cleaned out that fridge, was a jar of picklelilly,
a.k.a. sweet relish. That was never replaced and I had five packages of hot dogs
staring at me.
Picklelilly sounds like something from an Uncle Remus story...
ReplyDeleteChandler would have loved a whole chicken smothered in dry cheese...
Oh wow. Picklelily. Why did mom teach us such strange names for foods she served us? I was awkward enough as a child. No wonder my friends always asked me what I was talking about.
ReplyDeletePatti, I thought it was a strange name for relish also until Mark and I opened our hot dog stand here in Florida. It always warmed my heart when somebody would order a hotdog with picklelilly on it. Every single time I asked, "Where are you from?", Chicago was the answer.
ReplyDeleteHey! Picklelily is British! It's yellow, though. I think a mustardy, relish thing that people put on their burgers and sausages.
ReplyDeleteAlso Pickle is a spread that is dark brown and I have no idea what's in it but everyone puts it on cheese sandwiches...which are called sammies here in the UK
Just a little British tutleage.
Kim, It may be brown in England, but in Chicago, the city that dyes it's river bright green on St. Patrick's day, it is like the river, bright green.
ReplyDeletePicklelily - memories!!
ReplyDeleteI call em Sammich's. I remember the Picklelily (piccalilly??) when we were kids was a grayish dark green. Ew.
ReplyDeleteI never put real food in the "crisper" drawers. Beer, my non-dairy flavored creamer, wine coolers, soda yes, but not perishable food. In our house, the drawers have been dubbed "the rotters" because by the time I remember there's food in there, that's what's happened. LOL
ReplyDelete