Clean out your fridge day

[lagatta]

Found out about this on the Net - surprise! But no, I'm not cleaning my fridge today - I cleaned it a couple of weeks ago, and am busy working on a deadline today. I should wash it down thoroughly, as it still has a faint unpleasant odour - think it was from a New Form of Life I tracked down and eliminated (wham, boom, shebang!).

This must have started in the US as it is not long before American Thanksgiving (source of many unidentified life forms, as are the Christmas-New Years holidays).

www.practicallyedible.com/edible.nsf/pages/cleanoutyourrefrigeratorday

[bixaorellana]

One excellent way to feel really stupid and really unhappy is to fill the crisper drawer with water, then try to move it. That brittle, unreplaceable item will break in a trice!

I get bones from the butcher from my dog. A while back I got a batch that overnight infused the refrigerator with that awful, ammoniacal reek that only beef can produce. I was going out that day, so couldn't deal with the problem. In desperation, I poured a little straight bleach into a plastic jar top and set it on a shelf of the refrigerator. It was like magic! The strange thing was that the stink and the bleach smell neutralized each other and the fridge was smell-free. The bleach will dry up pretty quickly, leaving crystals behind. I left those on the shelf, figuring they were doing a better job than baking soda ever did.

[Deleted]

Food doesn't seem to (usually) stink up refrigerators like when I was little. I wonder why. I guess we use a lot more airproof plastic containers...

[Deleted]

I don't clean mine out as much as I should.

I did defrost and clean the big freezer the other day though, it really needed it.

[lagatta]

I cleaned out a tall, narrow painted-metal pantry cupboard today (I decided to take the day off computery stuff - except of course looking at it from time to time to see if I have to do anything else very swiftly, and then looking at websites) as I had been working long hours and I'm not a naturally neat and tidy person - things get messy if I don't make a conscious effort. I found one glass container with kasha or bulghur in it was buggy so had to dispose of that and checked everything else. I try to eat organic as much as possible and it is essential to keep an eye on stuff - they didn't start using chemicals on foods deliberately to poison people, after all!

So I discarded anything dubious, washed the shelves with a soap and bleach solution and rearranged the staples better. It is not very cold so I could open the back door onto the back balcony so as not to get too much of a nosefull of bleach.

kerouac, as much as possible I use glass containers (though many do have plastic tops. I really dislike letting foods sit in plastic.

Another question, how can one tell if fish has gone off? I just defrosted a basa fillet - I had eaten an identical one two or three days ago - but it seemed a bit smelly in the fridge. Perhaps the faint odour is from something else. I rinsed it off and smelled it again and its seems fine. I hate wasting food, but of course I don't want to poison myself from a cheap fish fillet. But I just defrosted it - it was perfectly frozen and didn't looked at all as if it had thawed and refrozen - I bought the fillets just this week, at a reliable nearby Asian shop. Bizarre. Perhaps I'm just smelling things from cleaning stuff.

[bixaorellana]

LaGatta, I think sometimes the outside of fish or meat smells bad because of what's touched it when it was being packaged. It's like that bag of dog bones & meat -- once rinsed, they smelled okay. An occasional heightened sense of smell can be hormonal, too.

About the buggy stuff -- I am relentless on this subject, so if I've said this before, please forgive me....
I say put anything that could harbor weevils or those mothy things into the freezer at least overnight. Even the cleanest supermarket could get in a shipment of something that would infest all their bags of flour, for instance. Freezing grains, flour, etc. for a few hours should kill off any bug eggs. Be very careful about accepting "perfectly good food" from people who are moving. That's a good way for weevils to sneak into your home.

[lagatta]

That is a good idea. Of course you live in a much warmer climate, where bugs would proliferate faster. For some months of the year, no reason to use the freezer here - I'd just put them in a plastic bin (one of those "Rubbermaid" storage bins) in the cold air on the back balcony.

The filet smells fine now - it could be using bleach and other cleaning products. I'll just cook it very plain and throw it away if there is an off taste. The "chain of cold" seems unbroken, and I ate its package mate two days ago.

[Deleted]

I have a cucumber ticking like a time bomb in my vegetable drawer.

[lagatta]

I ate the basa fillet last night and am perfectly fine. Dunno why it smelled a bit off.

[existentialcrisis]

weevils? mothy things I'm scared...

[bixaorellana]

As well you might be! Weevils are tiny little snouted monsters that thrive in grains, flours, cereals and the like. They can infest your kitchen in moments. There are various moth eggs that can be found in things like dried chiles. They create webby clots in dried foods.

[existentialcrisis]

Ooooh those weevils must be what I found in my room mate's store-bought pancake mix a few years back. Serves her right for buying store-bought pancake mix.

[lagatta]

Actually, they are even fonder of stoneground organic flour, and pancake mixes made from a variety of those.

[bjd]

They can get into anything: grains, dried fruit, pasta, flour, you name it. Disgusting things. We have had to throw lots of food out several times. I have stopped buying oatmeal because that's where they seemed to come from most often.

I have now found traps with pheromones on them that you glue to the inside of your cupboard door. The food mites get stuck to the glue and die a slow miserable death. It also takes a while to get the glue off your fingers when you are trying to stick the thing to the door.

[bixaorellana]

Bjd ~~ I keep my oatmeal in the freezer. If space is a problem, just do what I said above & put it in the freezer overnight, then transfer it to a canister for storing in the cupboard.

I don't care for many ornamental canisters, especially ceramic ones with loose-fitting lids. Screw-top jars are far better. It behooves one to make friends with bartenders or people who work in ice cream outlets. Those jars that maraschino cherries come in are ideal canisters. They're not too tall, clear glass, & the mouth is large enough to accomodate a scoop.

[existentialcrisis]

Is one more likely to experience these pests in a warmer climate? I haven't encountered them since that one summer. I lived in a downstairs flat in the nice end of Halifax. In the south end of Halifax there are lots of trees and general vegetation. My flat was constantly invaded by fruit flies, ants, and house flies (once encountered 50+ in my kitchen - not fun). I never had those problems in the more urban areas of downtown. I must be strange, but I don't like living in a lush green area with tree branches, spider webs and bugs all in my face ... eck... I prefer concrete.

[lagatta]

Yes, these infestations are definitely more common in warmer climates, but known in cooler ones too - and in particular when storage areas are overheated, which ironically happens sometimes in cold countries due to heating systems.

Well, I'm a hardcore urbanite, but I do like trees and we are trying to get more planted on our street. You don't have screens on your windows?

[existentialcrisis]

Actually... that was the main problem. It got so hot in there! We'd have to open our back door to let in whatever breeze could possibily breeze in... but the screen door broke off in a particularly bad rain storm that spring so the kitchen was wide open to the world! The landlord was useless... so it stayed that way all summer.