Tag Archives: fridge

Eat, Sleep, TV . . .

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Yes, it’s another post about work/life balance. I have it about right, I think as I earn just about enough to buy food, fuel and add to my collection. In an ideal world I would earn more and buy more for my collection, but you can’t have everything and I’m in the fortunate position of having enough money to pay for the things I want, and only wanting the things I am able to afford. It’s not a luxurious life-style but it works for us. If I suddenly developed an urge to have holidays, stay in luxury hotels or have a new car every few years we would struggle, but we don’t. It’s Micawber syndrome.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.

Last night we dined as well as any of the Royal Houses of Europe – roasted cauliflower, mustard cheese sauce, roasted leeks and sweet and sour brussels and mushrooms. You don’t need swan, truffles and caviar to live well. The basis for my menu choices I hear you ask . . .

Well, I had planned cauliflower steaks but there was an element of softness entering into some of the florets due to me not getting on with it last week, so I cut it up and roasted it. We had the remains of a bag of ready grated cheese in the fridge. We had leeks. We had too many mushrooms due to a breakdown in communication. And I found the brussels at the back of the fridge while I was getting the mushrooms.

Yes, I share your incredulity at the stuff we put in our fridge, but Julia insists on cramming it with stuff that should really be in the vegetable rack and thirty years of marriage have failed to make her see sense.

When we move she wants a bigger fridge so she can store even more random things in it and make life even more difficult for me.

Header photo is of a previous roasted cauliflower meal, with healthy veg and nut cutlets.. Last nights efforts ween’t particularly photogenic. And I was hungry by the time I’d finished. The lower picture is just random vegetables.

Edit (later in the day): See the next post for more news of our mixed day.

Stir Fry Vegetables

 

The Great Camembert Cheese Debacle

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The events described here took place around Christmas 2016 (not 2017 as I previously claimed).

In the lead up to Christmas I did my normal trick of buying enough food to last a family of eight for a fortnight. We are, of course, a family of four and Christmas lasts a day. If you really resist the great outdoors you may manage to make it last three days before close confinement with the family starts to make your thoughts turn to murder.

This included buying an industrial quantity of Stilton from Long Clawson Dairy and a selection of Lesser Cheeses from the supermarket. These included various waxed truckles, Lancashire Cheese with Apricots and a large wheel of Camembert.

Even for a family of cheesophiles this is a lot of cheese.

The proper word for a cheese lover is, it seems, turophile. I’m not keen on that – it’s far too close to turdophile for my liking and any confusion could result in a very regrettable selection of sandwiches.

So, that’s the first stage.

At this point it’s necessary to confess something about the fridge ecosystem. The clue, of course, is in the word ecosystem. I once produced a very acceptable blue cheddar in the fridge by leaving a large chunk of badly wrapped non-blue cheddar concealed behind the top shelf chutney jars.

There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio,  Than are dreamt of in your philosophy, as Hamlet said. The same principle would appear to apply to our fridge.

That’s the second stage.

Finally, you overfill the fridge in a chaotic manner, eat stuff, put it back, wrap it badly and have an enjoyable Christmas.

A week or two later there was a suspicion that all was not well in the fridge. This manifested itself as a slight but distinctive smell. We couldn’t see anything obvious, so I moved a few things, produced soup from a selection of mis-matched left-overs and tried to ignore it.

It carried on for a week or so, with Julia suggesting there was something on top shelf that needed attention and me avoiding doing anything about it. (She’s not tall enough to reach the top shelf and I’m very lazy).

From my observations I can state confidently that Camembert, when half used and then stored in a fridge, stays fresh for a while then starts to smell a bit. It’s probably a good idea to do something at that juncture.

If you don’t, the consequences are not good, and the change is both rapid and traumatic.

The slight whiff of ripe Camembert can escalate rapidly while you are out at work, as Julia found when opening the fridge one evening. It had risen in pitch from being a bit whiffy to something that filled the entire ground floor with the smell of week old rugby socks.

Fortunately it tasted a lot better than it smelt.

And that, my friends, is why I am banned from buying, possessing and storing Camembert.