By Dick Brooks
For Capital Region Independent Media
The larder was getting low so I decided to do a major re-supply trip to the market.
Having the short-term memory of a large sieve, I started making a list. I went through the pantry and listed the needed dry and canned goods. I checked the supply of paper goods and listed the needed items.
I then proceeded to the refrigerator. Milk, coffee creamer and butter joined the other items on the list.
That’s when I made my mistake of the day. I’m allowed one daily. I decided to weed out anything that looked dead or wounded, something I try to do with regularity once every decade or so.
I started with the stuff on the door — three bottles of salad dressing, one almost full, one that had a little in the bottom but could be useful if a little water was added and then shaken, and one bottle of French dressing that looked like it had already been watered and shaken. What remained couldn’t have lubricated more than a lettuce leaf or so. The use-by date was shortly after the turn of the century so extravagantly, I decided to discard it.
There were two bottles of hot sauce; we never use hot sauce so the one with the lowest liquid level went into the discard bag. There were three bottles of mustard, two yellow and one brown, I discarded the almost empty bottle of yellow and moved the half bottle of catsup up to join them.
I eliminated the dry bottle of spray butter. I also disposed of the piece of blue cheese in spite of the beautiful colony of mold growing on it. I left the Zip Lock bag where we store the excess duck and soy sauce packages from the Chinese take-out. They never go bad.
I moved to the top shelf. There were four jars of apple sauce, three of which had a teaspoon of apple sauce left in them. I kept the almost full one. Most of the stuff near the front was semi-fresh and in good shape. I moved them aside and proceeded to the archives in back of them.
Half a jar of pickled herring from Christmas, a couple of containers of leftovers, one of which I couldn’t identify and the other was something with elbow macaroni, two jars of jelly with a little tiny bit left in them. All these treasures went into the discard bag. I left the can of Red Bull remaining from my son’s visit last summer and the gel-filled head band to cool your sweating brow, also left from last summer.
The next shelf again was fronted by fairly current stuff. I moved the leftovers and delved into the back where I found a bottle of wheat germ that I’d never seen before but I’m sure dates back to biblical times. It looked useable if not appetizing, so I left it.
The meat and cheese drawers had nothing green or unidentifiable so I moved to the bottom shelf. Everything there was in good shape although I didn’t recognize or understand the jar of marshmallow Fluff I found in the back. The vegetable drawers yielded up a semi-soft onion and half a cucumber that had seen better days. They topped off the by-now full discard bag.
I then pulled out the freezer drawer and started digging past the recent additions on the top. I then replaced the top items and closed the drawer again. An adventure for another day, there were things down there that haven’t seen the light of day since the last Ice Age.
I lugged all the dead stuff out to the garage, loaded up a garbage bag and decided to make a detour to the transfer station on my re-supply trip to the market. A night in the garbage can would not improve them and although Telly, my faithful canine companion, would probably love the aroma, I didn’t think I’d feel the same way.
The garbage and I all boarded Casper the friendly Kia and drove to the transfer station with the windows open.
We then went to the market. I had left my list on the kitchen counter.
Thought for the week: Don’t worry about what people think — they don’t do it very often.
Until next week, may you and yours be happy and well.
Reach columnist Dick Brooks at Whittle12124@yahoo.com.
