Tales from Dorry: "Is your refrigerator running?"

Do you remember when you would get a call with that question asking if your refrigerator was running? And if you responded yes, the next line was, "well you better go catch it!" Well if I got a call from someone today asking if my refrigerator was running, I would say, "I don't know." Honestly, I am not sure half the time if my refrigerator is running or not. When it is running it sounds like someone is cranking up their car and trying to get it to stay cranked. I believe that the compressor is trying to quit on our refrigerator. I have to make a call to our landlady at 10 and tell her that our refrigerator is making really loud noises when it is running, and that the ice in the freezer melts and then freezes and then melts again and that there is water dripping from our refrigerator ceiling. I was supposed to call her yesterday, but was not feeling all that great and decided that our refrigerator will last another night. Yesterday, I decided that if I was going to call Jerry our landlady, then it probably would be best to clean out our refrigerator of past due leftovers.

Have you ever kept a leftover in the refrigerator for so long that when you go to take it out to clean it, you can't recognize or even remember what you had for dinner that night. I found a lot of those in our refrigerator. Cooked carrots do not look like cooked carrots when they have seen months in the fridge. And cream of chicken soup is no longer chicken soup, but something that died and decided to grow wings again. ICK!!!! I couldn't believe the things I found in the back of our refrigerator!!! I don't think you would believe it either. If it wasn't for Nathan, there would be no reason to keep leftovers anymore. He eats them for lunch now, so it isn't as bad. Before I started feeding him leftovers, the leftovers got pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten until now. As I pulled out a leftover pasta, I thought to myself, "I don't remember ever making anything like that!!!" Although with the mold growing on it, it's no wonder I don't remember it.

OH the smells that I smelled that day!! I wish I had had a gas mask it was so pungent in the kitchen. I scrubbed hard and long on each gladware and ziploc container that I emptied of its deranged contents.

I don't own real tupperware so I use and reuse the gladware that contained food from our wedding day that we took on our honeymoon for snacking on. Whenever I bought deli meat, I bought it in ziploc or gladware storage boxes and reused them after using up all the meat for sandwiches. And recently I bought some more ziploc containers for storing home made salsa so I now have more than enough food storage containers for leftovers and salsa. We haven't had much leftovers recently, since I have been making less meat with dinner and more vegetables. We eat all of the meal each dinner and if we are still hungry, we eat salsa and drink a lot of water or tea. It has helped Nathan in loosing weight now that I have stopped making all the fattening beefy dinners I used to make and have gone to only one night of beef dinner and the rest of chicken and veggies. Also, it has been several months since he has last seen a dessert of mine.

Anyway, our refrigerator is now nearly spotless and looks strangely empty. I have room!!!