How Much is Inside My Fridge

A thoroughly unauthorized rip-off of Rob Cockerham

One of my favorite web sites is cockeyed.com. I think Rob, its creator, is brilliant. In fact, if you google my full name, the very first hit is for cockeyed on a page called “Critics rave about Cockeyed.com.” In any case, I have been reading the web site for years, and always wished I was creative enough to do something that Rob might link to. Then one day, I saw that he had linked to this:

Goofy college kids' "how much is inside" project.

I thought this was pretty lame, given that it wasn’t even a full-sized fridge. In true Crocodile Dundee style, I said out loud (with the Australian accent) “That’s not a fridge. THIS is a fridge!”

Now my fridge, I thought, would be worthy of a “How Much is Inside” experiment. However, I am criminally lazy, so I did nothing about it.

As many of my readers (two good friends, my husband and my mom) know, we’re selling our home. We are having an open house tomorrow, and I got to thinking. What could I do around here that would make the house look really great? Being naturally nosy, I decided that if I were going to an open house, I would look in the fridge. And then I thought about what my fridge looked like.

This is the fridge.

This is the door.

This is the freezer door.

And this is the freezer.

Now, we’re being generous enough to throw the fridge in with the house*, so I figured it was a good time to clean out the fridge so the potential new owners could see what a fabulous deal they are getting.
*This is not generous at all. The new house comes with a better fridge, and this way we won’t have to move it.

And that brings us to “How much is inside my fridge.” Because there’s nothing like goofing off and having fun while doing onerous housework.

First, I took everything out of the freezer and put it on the counter. I had to take the photographs in sections.






Phew! In no particular order, what those photos (and my freezer) contain is:
56 ice cubes in 4 trays. Two of the trays were inherited when Monkeygirl moved out. They are hard to get ice out of, which is probably why she left them.

Two heels of bread and one half a loaf. I don’t like the Bohemian Hearth bread much, but when I shop at Bel Air, that’s all they have in the way of mostly wheat. The rest of my bread is Alvarado St bakery, and I love it, but I don’t eat the heels. That’s why they’re still there. I keep my bread in the freezer because it doesn’t go stale as quickly as it would otherwise.
An open bad of Trader Joe’s Indian Potato Medley. Good, but probably now tastes like freezer.

Naked Lounge whole bean coffee. Our favorite, second only to the Hula Bean peaberry we brought back from Hawaii. Well, Stumptown in Portland is pretty good, too.

Arborio rice, brown basmati rice, white jasmine rice. We like rice around here. Arborio rice is the kind you use to make risotto.

Two paint rollers with paint. If you don’t want to wash them out, you can freeze them and thaw them later. I forgot these were in here.

Two full bags of frozen stir-fry mix. One half-full bag of carrots and peas.

Two flexible ice packs (for injuries).

Two blue ice bricks (for keeping foods cold in an ice chest).

One bag mixed berries, one bag blueberries, one bag containing about five frozen raspberries.

One container Morningstar Farms veggie sausage patties.

One zipper bag with one piece of my grandmother’s homemade candy.

One zipper bag with several pieces of my own homemade candy.

Frozen corn.

Tiny bottle Bombay Sapphire gin. I haven’t the faintest idea why we have this. I suspect it moved here from my husband’s old apartment.

One large bottle chocolate mint flavored liqueur. I know for sure this one moved in with my husband. Of course, since “the incident,” he’s a teetotaler, and I don’t really drink alone, so this just lives in the freezer now.

The incident.
One partial bag pecans. One partial bag walnuts. Both were for baking.

A few chopped almonds in a zipper bag. Left over from Ice Cream sundae and Muppets night.

Two frozen waffles.

Whole wheat English muffins.

Orange juice concentrate. For Mother’s Day faux mimosas.

Dreyer’s ice cream. Note that the canister seems short. Husband cuts down the carton and puts the lid back on to save space, and possibly to make it easier to eat out of the container with a spoon. Fairly ingenious. I’m not sure if the rest of this ice cream will ever be eaten, as Husband confessed that he had “mined all the fudge out of it.”

Double Rainbow sorbet.

Angel flake coconut (1/2 bag). Left from a German Chocolate cake.

Unsweetened coconut (3/4 bag). From a cabbage curry recipe that wasn’t as spectacular as it sounded.

1 container Fudgsicles. Mmm. Fudgsicles.

On to the fridge.

Well, I’ve been called the condiment queen, and for good reason. The fridge was a much bigger task than the freezer. Again, I had to empty it entirely, but I couldn’t do this all at once. It had to be done in stages. First, the door and part of the top shelf, then the top shelf and part of the middle. Then the middle drawer (where beets go to die) and the bottom shelves and finally the bottom drawers.

Here are the pictures of it all.

















And here is the list of contents:

Chili-garlic paste

Tempura sauce

Rice vinegar

Soy sauce. Kikkoman Lite and regular, which I combined after this photo so that now it is half-lite.

Garlic marinade

Ginger marinade

Kim chee. So delicious, but not the kind of thing we end up eating a lot.

Sesame oil.

Red pepper dip

Barbecue sauce. Bone-sucking sauce is the best ever.

Strawberry sauce. This was left over from Muppet Sundae, and I haven’t touched it yet.

Balsamic glaze

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. These are on a decorative little plate because I intended to give them to my next-door neighbors, but every time I saw them, I was doing something sweaty and dirty outside, so I didn’t want to touch the cookie plate with my hands. Instead, it stayed here until I started eating them myself. They’re really incredible. The recipe is here. Scroll down.

Cake flour. That’s just how I roll.

Fizzy water. One is husband’s, the other is mom’s. I think the stuff is foul.

Half and half

Tomato juice. This tends to last me forever, because I usually crave a tiny glass about once every two months, and I put a shot of hot sauce in it.

Pesto. I bought it for a recipe. It’s surprising how little I use it.

Tapenade

Marinara sauce

Tahini. This is sesame paste, which I primarily use to make hummus with, although I’ve used it for baba ghanoush, too.

Peppers. From husband’s coworker.

Watermelon. Yep, they come in yellow. I actually ate this later today.

Grapes. Green from Bel Air, purple from Full Belly Farm.

Ketchup. 2 bottles.

Twin Fin Chardonnay. A lovely, light, refreshing screw-top wine.

Dave’s Insanity Soyabi sauce

Salad dressing

Pepper plant hot sauce. My all-time favorite. They have it out on the tables at a local breakfast joint, and I can’t get enough.

Tofu. Yeah, tofu. What?

Olives

Tandoori paste

Bagel. From New York Bagel Boys, which we were comparing to Sacramento Bagel Company.

Yogurt

Tortillas. I purchased these to make enchiladas, but I haven’t had many opportunities to cook this week.

Salami

Bag of salad

Potatoes. Also from Full Belly Farm

Leftover yams. This looked like a great recipe (whiskey grilled yams), but it took a lot longer than I expected. I served these at a party, but they were done way after people had already eaten everything else. I threw them out after this photo.

Melons. Cantaloupes from Full Belly Farm.

Lemon juice

Mustard. Three traditional yellow mustards, one Sierra Nevada mustard, two that came in a gift pack at Christmas. I can explain all the yellow mustard: We like eating at Tower Cafe, but husband really prefers yellow mustard, which they do not have. So we have periodically bought a yellow mustard for him to sneak in in a pocket while on the way to Tower.

Mayonnaise

Shirazee salad. I made a recipe similar to this last week, only with cider vinegar instead of lemon juice.

Sauerkraut. Vegetarian households get very few opportunities to eat this, so it’s a good thing it lasts forever.

Brownies. I made brownies a few days ago, because, well... Don’t question a woman’s right to make brownies for no good reason!

Chutney

Cream cheese

Bacos

Pomegranate syrup

Orange flower water. It may have occurred to you that I have a lot of marginally exotic ingredients. That’s a fair assessment. I like to cook, especially ethnic foods.

Vinegars. Red wine vinegar, white vinegar, balsamic vinegar, rice vinegar, and red wine vinegar. I’d like to disclose that there is also cider vinegar in the cupboard. I don’t know why that one’s not refrigerated. They’re all different, I swear.

Margarine. This is a special cholesterol-reducing kind, that would have been a better idea if I actually used margarine.

Sweet and sour sauce. 2 bottles.

Gooseberry jam.

Fig jam

Blood orange marmalade

Butter

Cheese. Israeli feta, Tillamook jack (for the enchiladas), Tillamook sharp cheddar, chevre, low-fat string cheese. There’s not usually this much cheese.

Cilantro and lemongrass in a tube. I rarely use these in anything but soup, because the texture is awful.

Pickle relish

Tiny booze. We bought these at an ABC store in Hawaii because, well, because they were the right size to make it appear that our stuffed animals had their own bottles of alcohol.

Soy milk. Vitasoy Light Enriched Original is my favorite, but as you can see, I have the organic and the vanilla flavored. Why? Because Bel Air has been out of my kind for months. And I know they changed the packaging; they just really haven’t had it.

Chocolate syrup

Buttermilk. Thrown out after the photo. I have no idea how long that’s been in there.

Maraschino cherries. From Muppet Sundae.

Partially pollinated corn. I didn’t know how the heat affected corn.

Miso

Bruschetta sauce

Hummus. Husband’s favorite brand is Tribe, so we got this as an experiment at Costco, and at first he said he liked it, but then he stopped eating it.

Ricotta

Sriracha chili sauce. 3 bottles. We call it hot cock. I don’t know if everyone does.

Hot dog buns. Whole wheat, for the veggie dogs.

Veggie dogs

Homemade canned veggies. I know these moved from Husband’s apartment. His mom made them, and he claims to like them, but they haven’t been eaten.



48 of the above items could be considered condiments. There are 87 total items on the list. I counted the five mustards as five and any other item that had to be bought separately under the same standards (therefore, five bottles of vinegar, two of ketchup, etc.). However, if they came together (two melons, eight ears of corn, 12 tortillas), they were counted together. By these calculations, approximately 55% of the items in my refrigerator are condiments.

I also noticed while I was cleaning the fridge that the tempered glass plate that sits above the two crisper drawers in the bottom is marked with some sort of mystical measuring device. As the lines conform neither to the metric system nor the American customary measurements, I have deemed them “fridge units.” As generally it is the longest lines that indicate a whole unit and smaller ones mark fractions of units, I measured several items in terms of fridge units, which are just under 4 inches long. The fridge units are divided into 36ths.


This partially pollinated ear of corn is 2 1/2 fridge units (FUs). The perspective makes it unclear, but the left end of the ear is resting on a FU line.


This organic gypsy pepper is almost exactly 1 FU.

I was disappointed that both items were so close to the actual FU measurement, because I was hoping to find something I could measure in 36ths of an FU. I tried a coffee bean.

This is a really terrible picture, and on the basis of this alone Rob will probably disqualify me from a mention on Cockeyed.com, but I have to post it for scientific integrity.



One-ninth of a FU! I had to do fractions for that, so you know I care...

That nearly wraps up the “How Much is Inside My Fridge” experiment, but there are two more things of note.

First, one of the aforementioned close friends asked me whether I was actually bothering to clean the fridge in the process of finding out how much is inside. The answer is yes. The fridge is sparkling. Unfortunately, anyone looking in it will probably still think we are plum crazy*, since it is still overflowing with plums. They are growing from a neighbor's tree over our backyard and therefore “free.” Meaning, we must gorge ourselves on as many as possible.
*I’m sorry. I try to stay away from puns.

And second, although I already knew it, this project reinforced the fact that my cat needs a corn husk intervention. She’s crazy for them. I’m only sorry that this photo cannot include the “NARRNARRRCRUNCHMUNCHSCHLORP” sound effects that accompany my cat gorging herself on corn husks. In fact, she’s actually being rather delicate here, since she knows she’s being watched.



How many soda cans does my fridge hold? How many calories are in it? Lord knows. How many cubic feet? Ultimately, I could have saved myself some time by just posting this one photo...


...but it wouldn’t have been as fun, would it?