CLEANING OUT THE REFRIGERATOR AS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INQUIRY

“...all the while he is making inspection is himself under the closest inspection.”

Soren Kierkegaard

I have a brand new Westinghouse top freezer refrigerator.  My old refrigerator was a mess, water pooling, freezing under the vegetable drawers, into the vegetable drawers. I still do not know what went wrong. But it had been going wrong for far too long. Unfortunately, this transition from the old to the new meant confronting the reality of my refrigerator’s contents. Contrary to the condition of most single people that I know, my refrigerator is always full.  

No doubt I inherited this tendency in part from my father, a child of the depression, who abhorred waste and had something of a hoarding instinct. I remember clearing perhaps a hundred tins of sardines, some of them seven years old, from the pantry of his house when he moved to assisted living. Canned sardines were a form of currency for him.  He and his pals played poker for them when he was stationed in India during WWII. A stock of them meant foregoing the dreaded mutton that was routinely served in the mess hall. To pass them up when they were on sale was unthinkable.  

My compulsions course differently.  I found three jars of Spanish olives, relics of one brief stint of martini drinking and another of making small batches of alcaparrado (Manzanilla olives, pimentos and capers.) Multiple incarnations of chili sauces were unearthed including chili black bean and two styles of chili garlic. Hot cherry pepper spread and various hot sauces were hidden in a grove of pickle jars. I am very fond of bread and butter pickles and apparently lived with the fear of running out of them.  A variety of fish sauces guarded three dark corners of the second and third shelf. A goofy panoply of oddball mustards in tiny, easily overlooked jars were scattered throughout in addition to the standard brown, yellow and Dijon styles.

The contents of the freezer put me to shame.  The block covered with ice and white frost was a package of Nathan’s hot dogs.  The box of veggie burgers (one patty used) had a 2008 expiration date. Plastic tubs of stock that had been there sufficiently long that the dates and identifying labels had disappeared just had to go. A recent episode on America’s Test Kitchen addressed the fact that most freezers are not as cold as they should be to really keep food safe and that people commonly hold food too long. My father believed that once a chicken went in the freezer or a sardine was tinned it achieved a kind of immortality.  I live with enough of a fear of food born illness not to get sentimental about throwing it out.  I will admit that my heart is a bit heavy at the thought of dishes never cooked and hours wasted in shopping and thoughtful preparation.

When I had emptied the old refrigerator, saved the best of what it held and wiped the jars clean, I discarded the rest.  It was like going to confession.  I had faced my sins, felt remorse and pledged to do better.  When I open the door of my refrigerator now, I feel clean and new.  

Charles Seluzicki