On Friday 30 bloggers were invited to Kirribilli House to meet the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. I wasn’t invited. Something to do with not enough reach or influence I suspect (although I would argue the ten of you I have left after the great blog move are highly influential people). It was blogger power to the fore as Julia learnt about the online world from the women doin’ the bloggin’.
Meanwhile at Shambles Manor I spent Friday waiting for the fridge man. The 15 month old fridge was not keeping things cold (a bit of a disadvantage with a fridge). The frost-free freezer had frosted up. Food was rotting at a rapid rate.
So I waited, refused lunch invitations ’cause the repairman has a jam-packed schedule and can’t be sure exactly when he might turn up at your place.
At 3.30pm he appeared. Spent three minutes on the fridge and ten minutes admiring Mr Shambles slate work on the fireplace.
Apparently, SOMEONE must have left the door of the fridge open overnight (note nobody is admitting to the crime) dripping water had iced up internally and was gumming up the works. A 24 hour defrost was to be conducted.
I spent the late afternoon tossing all the food we had not gotten around to eating. We had attempted a “race the decay” marathon of eating as the fridge’s performance worsened over the last week but we failed.
The average NSW household wastes $1036 worth of food each year. An appallling figure which we upped considerably this week.
With the fridge sparkling clean – when you throw out EVERY item there’s no excuse for not getting to all the crevices at the back – we stocked it back up. I must say it is a nice feeling to know that all the food in the fridge is fresh (because trust me some of what we found could have provided enough penicillin to cure disease in an entire third world country – some forgotten delights may have been there longer than the week the fridge was on the blink – not that I’ll admit that publicly).
How do you end up wasting food? The leftovers you are sure someone will eat. The ingredients that didn’t get cooked ’cause you got caught up at some after school event and cheated with takeaway instead. The use-by dates that slip away before you can gobble down the last of the yoghurt, milk, whatever.
So new plan – we are using every single item of food this fortnight. Nothing is to be thrown out. So help me I’ll go all depression era and make soup out of everything if that’s what it takes. No more waste.
My husband loves the warehouse/big box stores and proudly comes home with giant containers of whatever kind of food strikes his fancy. That made perfect sense when we were a four-generation family, but now there’s just the two of us! My refrigerator is full of science projects and he just keeps bringing home more…
What is it with buying the “biggest” of everything? My husband does that too!
Loved you post Janine:) Looks like you are enjoying the new WordPress – I think you’re doing very well! I might share a plugin – or two!
By the way – did he fix the fridge?!
Yes fridge working again, yay.
I’ll remember New Year’s Eve 2012 as the year I stayed up ’till 2:00am cleaning out the refrigerator!
Since we’ve transitioned to one income, I know what you mean about trying to conserve food! We make a lot of soup, eat a lot of leftovers, and freeze a lot of meat that is on sale.
Doesn’t your life change after kids – instead of partying you clean fridges! The one income stage is particularly challenging.
LOL…this makes me laugh and my girls would probably love to comment about their mother’s ‘hoarding’ ways. We moved to our apt above the bar 9 years ago and a year or so ago my girls decided it was time to clean the fridge and cupboards out. I received lecture after lecture about some of the dates being from a different time in life (pre 9/11). Well OK…I had been working 2 or 3 jobs prior to purchasing a bar and I don’t have a lot more time on my hands now. And really how bad can those canned items get anyway! ;’) Or the shelf life on those boxes of mac n cheese? Now they do a regular purging of the cabinets and send the food to a food bank where a hungry needy person will actually use it!
I actually moved some canned items with me for years before accepting I really was never going to eat them!
I have this tendency of buying too much produce. It just looks so good at the time. Then I have produce rotting in my fridge while I’m travelling. Also, I assume that I will not eat restaurant left-overs at this point, so I’ve stopped asking them. Saves room in the fridge, but still makes me feel sad at the restaurant.