Raiders of the Lost Barqs

It looked like a bazillion-year-old frozen dinosaur had met dynamite.

Deep brown-red icy chunks dripped down the shelves, the inside of the refrigerator door, and clung to the ceiling like tiny Jurassic stalactites.

This isn't what you expect when reaching for the coffee creamer, let me tell ya.

Excavation of the fridge left me looking accusingly at a number of suspects. The guava jelly my dad sent from Florida last year?... No, that was still hermetically-sealed-- and had it really been a year already? And what's a "guava," anyway? Aren't they endangered?

(Kidding, kidding. I do know what a guava is. They run free over the Serengeti.)

Well, how about the jar of bruschetta topping? No, that seemed all right. Except for... didn't I pick that up last Fall?

And okay, what about that carton of tanger-kiwi-strawbe-cocon-orange juice? Nope. Safe and secure, in spite of its juice-oriented identity crisis.

Then I caught myself doing something that, in retrospect, seems unwise and also fairly gross. Such was my desire to uncover the source of the mess, that before I could stop me, I actually found myself tasting a little bit of the ice. "Hm. Sorta sweet!.. And I still don't know what it is."

It's just good I'm not a forensic analyst, is all I can say.

Well, further archaeological unearthing revealed that the culprit was a can of soda pop which had gotten pushed to the back of the fridge, frozen, and went out with an exuberant display of the laws of physics.

Yet, I also learned that I am apparently just an incredibly disgusting individual. Oh, it's not only the fact that I am stupid enough to taste what appeared to be an exploded T-rex Slushee. (I was not fully-caffeinated at this time, so some forgiveness should be alotted there.)

But the stuff I found in this fridge -- and I had scrubbed it out a number of times previously, too-- seemed to hearken back in time like a poorly-conceived scrapbook of my life.

A bag of two stale pitas, drier than the Sahara in summer, for snack a few months ago when I got in a Greek mood... Tupperware tubbies of meals gone by... Parts of gift baskets celebrating events I'm too old to even recall anymore... This is how I have been living.

What have I been doing instead of attending to the neolithic num-nums in my refrigerator? Well, blogging, probably. But one would think opening the refrigerator and being greeted by an Otherworldly voice growling, "Zuul!" would have gotten my attention sooner.

Alas, no. It took the Big Bang of Buoyant Beverages to help me see something was amiss.

So I sipped life-giving coffee while strolling down the culinary memory lane, saying so long to the pita.... goodbye to the busted beverage.

History is a great way to learn from our mistakes, donchaknow. So I'm hoping that the next time my refrigerator starts whispering in ancient tongues and glowing a bit, I'll know to head it off before the spewing starts.

Oh, and speaking of which-- does this milk seem sour to you?

Here: smell.


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The good folks at Humor-blogs are willing to sniff cartons of sour milk anytime.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ewwww - just Ewwwww

I'm lucky enough to have a House Elf in the person of my Brian. He takes care of weekly forays into the back of the fridge and pulling out stuff and asking the Three Questions.

Question One: Are we ever going to eat this? If its yes, it goes back in the fridge. If I say no we proceed.

Question Two: Will the cats eat this? If its yes, its fed to cats over the next several days. If no, we proceed.

Question Three:Will this kill Aiko? If yes, it goes out in the trash, if no, the dog gets a treat.

I miss having a garbage disposal. The mechanical kind, not just the furry sort.

Unknown said...

Ah, grossing out one person at a time... my work here is done. :)

Well, nothing was FURRY or totally spoiled or anything, at least. I mean, I had a friend who lost a whole watermelon in his fridge once. :)

You have a good plan, though. I imagine question two gets many an unhappy face from the cats. "You expect me to eat-- WHAT?"

Anonymous said...

LMFAO

i just did this to our fridge a few weeks ago cuz i was tired of being grossed out by it. the other half leaves stuff in there FOREVER! (seriously. there was stuff in there from the time we moved in, i think. 5 years ago? ... ok, maybe not that old, but still)

Alice said...

I see it now - CSI: Pittsburgh.

You go around tasting the evidence, but I'm trying to think of how to make it more exciting and coming up empty. I guess there's not much lab work involved with that method.

And...when I first met my husband I found a 5 year old Stouffer's lasagna in his freezer.

Unknown said...

Ender- Five years? OH GOOD GOLLY. That stuff should have been on its way to kindergarten!

/Me, suddenly feeling a little less vile and disgusting.

Unknown said...

Hm, Alice-- I don't know, your "CSI:Pittsburgh" idea might still work...

I would have to hone my ability to inappropriately make puns every quarter of an hour. But it might just have a future. :)

Anonymous said...

I found a large icy lump of cat hair in my freezer.

Definately not edible, but more worrying is the fact I don't own a cat.

Unknown said...

Oh MY, Tiggy... So the previous owners of your fridge were, um, eccentric? Cat-lovers? Um, had a unique way of tracking their pets' hairball emissions?

G-ah!

Anonymous said...

I'm beginning to think that you have to be related to my dh except his fave thing to do is leave the pop out on the porch where it can explode all over the walls, ceiling and floor. He also would have things talking to him from the fridge too if I weren't around. Wonder if there is a support group for Entombers of Food and Beverage?

Unknown said...

Tanya- Heh, if there isn't, the fact that the support group has a nifty name already will give them a good start.

Anonymous said...

So...my parents fridge back home in Jersey (before they moved here and I can keep track of it) was a terrifying place. Once a year my sister and I would come together in support and spelunk through the mementos of meals past...most of which we refused to peer at too closely to possibly determine what it had started life as.

Susan

Unknown said...

Heya, Sue- "Spelunk" is a good word for the level of ick you're describing. That, I imagine, is where you don't wash any of the containers the food is in-- you just toss them and double bag the garbage bag I think. Also use toxic waste handling gloves. :)

Michele said...

Well you just accurately described the contents of my fridge to a T. Lot's of prehistoric artifacts in there. Though, the bit about tasting the ice on the walls? Is pretty gross, you are one brave explorer that's for sure! That was a damn funny post!!

Greg said...

Oh, man...you tasted the ICE?! You brave, silly woman, you.

I shudder to think how long it takes for a full watermelon to break down to nothingness...or at most a little slime.

Ours isn't too bad at the moment (one of the benefits of moving recently, I suppose...)...but it's not getting any attention until it rains (or of course, if it speaks to me...).

I love how you colored the inside of the fridge all black and red, creating a very twelfth-crisper drawer of Hell feeling...

Unknown said...

Greg- Yeah, I really wasn't caffeinated and was thinking it looked like a melty popsicle or something... it wasn't my best moment.

Thanks for appreciating the glowy portal of Hell bit in the fridge graphic. See, folks like you make my messing around with that all worthwhile!