I was reading this article in Salon about the way that people over-refrigerate, putting stuff like vinegar and mustard in the fridge, when this little passage inspired me:
Some other cooled peculiarities verged on the realm of too much information: hormone patches, Omega-3 fish oil tablets, nail polish, catnip and aloe vera for sunburns. You would not believe how many people these days keep flaxseed in with their cream (good), not to mention how many have a Sriracha sauce habit (bad — not the habit but the refrigeration).
Which made me think of a question: what’s the weirdest thing in your refrigerator?
I keep my eye cream in there, along with ear medicine for the resident fauna. I also have some witch hazel in the back that I keep for when I make bath bombs, though I haven’t done that in a while. There are probably things at the back that I can’t identify anymore, but I’m convinced they were once edible.
My fridge is pretty vanilla. Leftover pregnancy vitamins, maybe the homemade pickled beets no one got around to eating.
I guess mine would be mustard. But apparently it’s strange to like your mustard chilled? (Goes to read article.)
ha! great question. I usually have a few science experiments in there. I’m trying to see if there is a kind of mold that will actually burst out of the container over time. So far I haven’t seen it happen. But the weirdest thing is probably that the drawer that says “MEAT” on it is full of expired 120 film for my Holga. I used to keep a hockey puck in the freezer, but I haven’t done much skating since I moved to NC.
Oh, and I meant to ask: bath bombs? Are they the fizzy alka-seltzer-like tablets that you drop into the tub? I didn’t know you could make them yourself.
Yes, they are. And they’re very easy to make.
I keep my fish oil tablets in the fridge, along with my vitamins and probiotics. The three prescriptions go in the cupboard.
That is not the part of my illness that constitutes too much information, trust me.
You might have wanted to include a “no bodily fluids” rule. My fridge is pretty boring. The weirdest thing I have is probably either canola mayonnaise or a dried out ginger root. And I have several parts of a lamb in my freezer.
The gf insists on keeping film in there. I’m skeptical.
I always keep cigarettes in the freezer.
Bird food. And not the seed mix (though there’s some of that, too – and I keep it there to neutralize grain moths), the pelleted kibble kind. It says on the bag to refrigerate after opening to keep it from going stale.
I keep film and batteries in the fridge. I cleaned out the freezer yesterday and found a zip-lock bag with a $100 bill. Yay!
The beer I brought back from Iowa is possibly the oddest item, as we live in Portland, the land of microbrews. Or maybe it’s the solid dog food, the wall of sauces or the chili-soaked tofu with the texture of feta. In any case, the Mang Tomas All Purpose Sauce certainly freaked me out when I moved in, but that might have been due to my roommates’ fervor to determine the extent of its “all purpose” label. (Ice cream? Chocolate? Seriously?)
Drugs and a syringe. Legal.
Hey thanks for the link, zuzu. I’m going to make some bath bombs. I had no idea they were so simple.
Pfft. I live in Australia. “Room temperature” for us is a lot higher than most places… is the author seriously suggesting I leave my margerine in the cupboard? That would be fine if I wanted to use it in liquid form.
I also keep a lot of stuff in the fridge to keep it away from bugs, which cupboards don’t do. Does the amount of food in the fridge really impact the amount of electricity it uses?
As for the weird things in my fridge, there’s a few tabs of LSD in there left over from a party we had ages ago. Since none of us are heavy drug hoovers, it just sits happily in the back.
I also keep some of my makeup in there… see “Australïan” above.
Homemade toner. If I don’t refrigerate it, it gets cloudy then black spots grow. Ew. Plus, on a hot day, it’s really refreshing to have cold toner.
Colour photo paper and various boxes of film. I’m with hexy, Australia’s too damn hot a lot of the time, so I keep my photo stuff in there so it lasts. I wonder if some of the chemicals leak out? Mmmm, tasty.
my nuvaring! that and some old olives that i only ever eat 3 of and then toss when the oil goes rancid.
you’re not supposed to keep ketchup in the fridge? whoa. illumination!
Yes and no. The article discusses this, but only quickly in passing. A full fridge is better than an empty fridge, energy wise, because the cooling unit does not need to work as long/hard to cool the smaller volume of air surrounding the food in a full fridge. However, an overfull fridge loses efficiency. If air can circulate freely around your stuff, I don’t think it matters whether you’re keeping the soy sauce in there or not. (I do.) If you’re in danger of an avalanche, or you can’t see the back wall through the mass of stuff, let alone reach it – you probably need to clean. Before the food products you haven’t seen in 6 months develop sentience.
My daughter has been keeping a snowball in the freezer for a couple of years.
In the summertime I keep a bottle of lotion in the fridge. I’m on medication that makes me extremely photosensitive, and the slightest bit of sun exposure leaves me painfully burned. There is nothing like an application of cool lotion to ease the pain of a burn.
Other than that it’s ketchup and mustard and leftovers, all the way.
Haha, this is a pet peeve of mine. I have specifically griped about finding refrigerated Sriracha in friends’ fridges. And don’t get me started on fruit.
A rotten cantaloupe that’s been there for about four months. It looks like a shriveled head. Neither my room mate nor I want to touch it, and it really stinks.
Homemade pickles that my off-the-grid friend in Oregon made for me that I’m kind of scared to eat now. I think I have some lavender-filled eye pillows somewhere in my fridge too.
Other strange things I’ve seen in refrigerators lately: big bottle of liquid percoset, collection of miniature pumpkins.
Man I just totally took the Sriracha out of the fridge and replaced it with the olive oil after reading that. Do I feel stupid or what.
Oh yeah, and batteries! Don’t batteries last longer in the fridge?
In my freezer there is a small clear packet of an unknown dark brown liquid that absoutely refuses to freeze. I don’t know where it came from nor what it is, and I keep it in there because its seemingly magical ability to remain liquid at -18 or so C is somehow an inspiration to me in this troubled phase of my life…
Jill, maybe your cantaloupe could come hang out with my cucumber. They are both in frightening states of decomposition.
I once visited a house with a refrigerator that contained no fewer than 20 cans of tuna.
Aloe vera sunburn gel makes perfect sense to me. I got the worst sunburn of my life covering the state softball championships once and the cold gel on my skin was so soothing.
I remember reading a long time ago that perfume can be kept in the fridge.
people over-refrigerate, putting stuff like vinegar
I never put my plain vinegar in the fridge, but my understanding is that “fancy” vinegars (balsamic, etc.) are supposed to be refrigerated. According to my gf’s best friend, who is a chef, you are also supposed to refrigerate good olive oil, even though it turns cloudy (from being partially solidified) in the fridge.
I also have picked up my gf’s habit of using the fridge as a large sealed container: if it won’t be damaged by the coolness, I’ll put something in the fridge just to keep it out of reach of bugs.
I, depending on the type, refrigerate or freeze bread. Growing up in a more humid part of the LA basin, where there is a lot of mold, you just can’t keep bread at room temperature.
Another thing I refrigerate even though you are famously not supposed to do so is bananas. I find that refrigerating them stops them from getting any riper (so you gotta have ‘em ripe before putting them in), even though they sometimes turn black. Plantains don’t even really change color in the fridge: they just stop ripening — which is good if you wanna have green plantains for a dish your making on Sat. night and you can’t get to the store any later than Thurs.).
And yes. I do refrigerate mustard. I don’t use that much mustard, but when I do want it, I really need it and would hate to have it go bad, so I want it to keep it as fresh as possible for as long as possible and I figure refrigeration wouldn’t hurt.
Photo emulsion for silk-screening is the strangest thing in there. It’s in a closed jar inside a sealed zipper bag, so it should be safe. It’s right next to the acidophilus! mmm
Since they mention it in the article, the reason bottled water has expiration dates is that bacteria can grow in the bottles.
VODKA
Some kind if extremely powerful and expensive adhesive that has to be refrigerated. A sideways copy of “A Man For All Seasons” that holds up one side of the lower shelf. Kombucha fungus, or whatever it’s called, given by my Mum, is waiting dormant in a jar at the back.
Face masque, some of that Sriachi sauce, and yes, to my shame, soy sauce. But I have a reason! I keep misplacing it if I put it somewhere else. What’s weird about me is that if I make like a pasta or something, I put the lid on the pot and just shove it in the fridge. It will get eaten before it spoils. I don’t store much food, but have a habit of just going to the store every day for fresh stuff and eating leftovers until they’re gone.
I suggest using the method that I’ve seen when dealing with large dead rodents or small dead possums. Get a plastic grocery bag, put your hand in it, reach for the cantalopue, grab it, use your other hand to grab the handles of the bag and voila! Instant garbage.
I guess this is my midwesternness showing, but what the hell is sriachi sauce? And why aren’t you supposed to chill mustard? What’s up with that? I was raised that if it’s a condiment, and it’s wet, you stick it in the fridge.
That’s how you pick up dog shit, too.
You don’t have to, because it’s vinegar-based, and vinegar kills bacteria. Or won’t let it grow. Or something. But its shelf life can be measured by carbon dating.
Sriracha sauce is a hot chili paste (from Indonesia, I believe). It comes in a squeezy bottle, like French’s mustard, I guess, and the kind I buy, heck, perhaps the only kind I’ve ever seen, has a rooster on the bottle.
For those who don’t mind saltiness, NewYorkcentricity, and SadNoesque snark, Regina Schrambling, the author of the Salon article, has a great blog, Gastropoda.
I didn’t know mustard didn’t need refrigeration.
If you refrigerate onions, you cry less when you slice them.
I keep bergamot essential oil in the refrigerator. You are supposed to, but I suspect it’s unusual.
Also ghee. Which you shouldn’t need to refrigerate if you skim it perfectly, but I’m imperfect.
Oh, and in my fridge there is always: a bottle of champagne, a bottle of Lillet, random other bottles of white wine, and every weirdo condiment I ever bought out of curiosity only to discover I hate.
I chill mayonnaise and mustard because I think they taste better chilled. I chill ketchup because I rarely ever use it. I don’t chill any oils, because I use those frequently enough that they won’t go rancid before I finish them. However, I do have some good olive oils, so based on the comment above re: the chef’s suggestion, I’ll stick that in the refrigerator.
I don’t refrigerate bread for the most part, usually because I’ll finish it before it grows mold. However, if I still have any left after a week, I’ll put the remaining portion in the refrigerator.
I, like Amanda, tend to buy things fresh as I need them. And I see nothing weird whatsoever about putting pots with leftovers in the refrigerator. Saves on tupperware, which I can never keep around anyway. I always wind up giving it to someone else when I’ve brought food over.
Nut oils should be refrigerated after opening as well as vinegars that have a low acetic acid content, either by being non-commercial or because of additives like fruit and herbs.
I keep several thing that I like in the refrigerator because I am the only one who eats it and I cannot finish the whole container immediately. Oddest things in my fridge at the moment are prunes in vodka and duck fat (different containers).
An injection medication derived from lizard spit, and batteries
Empty pickle jars.
I don’t like pouring the brine down the drain (makes the kitchen smell) so I figure I’ll just wait until I take the garbage out, and throw the whole jar out, brine and all.
Except when it comes time to take the garbage out, I have already forgotten about the damn pickle jars, so it never happens. And in the fridge they sit. I think there’s 3 of them in there right now, all empty.
Oh, the eternal battle over whether the ketchup and mustard goes in the fridge or cabinet. I’m a cabinet lady myself- my roommate all about the fridge, so we have seperate bottles. In the fridge though, I’ve got some Lush face masks, and my roommates diabetic stuff.
I have both used and fresh cat vaccines for all my kitties. We keep the ones we have used so they can be thrown away in a biohazard safe container…I should probably find one of those sometime…meh
You don’t have to, because it’s vinegar-based, and vinegar kills bacteria. Or won’t let it grow. Or something. But its shelf life can be measured by carbon dating.
If you keep mustard too long it loses its flavour. I was under the impression the fridge slowed this.
I checked, and all my mustard says to keep refrigerated after opening.
I have nothing weird in my fridge, since I don’t think mustard and ketchup are weird in there. Is ground coffee weird in the fridge?We keep our bread in there too, since we make it ourselves and it doesn’t have any preservatives in it. Popcorn lives in the freezer, although I’ve heard that it doesn’t prevent unpopped kernels like I was originally told.
Lest this sound vaguely Dahmeresque, in our freezer, in a tightly sealed triple-layer of ziplock bags, we have six of our deceased pet aquarium fish to keep company with a one-pound whole red snapper purchased at my local Asian grocery which I didn’t have the heart to cook. I’m not kidding.
Whole wheat flour. When I made bread weekly, I used it up quickly enough that it wouldn’t go bad. Now that I’m in grad school, the bread making happens less often, and I ruined a batch of muffins the other day with rancid whole wheat flour. The next sack is now resting quietly in the fridge.
And fruit gets to live out of the fridge in the summer, when it is humid, but our house gets so bone-dry in the winter that apples and citrus shrivel within a few days. Into the fridge they go.
I have nothing weird in my fridge. Which, apparently, makes me pretty weird. I do have mustard and soy sauce in there, though; they say on the label to refrigerate after opening, so I do.
I have a refrigerator? I am a guy. why am I trying to answer this question?
rose water. It keeps fine outside but I never trust sugar to do well at room temp.
red wine. I don’t care what all the snobs think.
Oh, and olive oil? Going bad? I’ve never heard that one before. I must go through it too quickly. We buy one of those gallon-size cans and keep it on the counter, and it’s never gone rancid. I’d say we go through about one of those every 2-3 months. Are you really supposed to refrigerate it?
I was under the impression that mustard tended to change flavor if kept at room temperature. Directions for making mustard from mustard powder in the spice catalog say to leave it out for a few days until you get the flavor you want, then refrigerate.
We have a snowball in the freezer and several partial cans of cat food the cat won’t eat in the refrigerator. We used to have a placenta (human) in the freezer, though.
we currently have no less then 4 opened jars of capers in our fridge. We have bought perhaps two- for different recipes, forgetting that we already have some at home. The other two are from friends who moved and cleaned out their fridges and we got…capers. I just cannot figure out how to use that many at any given time, but they don’t really go bad, so I cannot justify throwing them out.
Anti-nausea suppositories, which, I guess, are in the TMI category.
I suppose some people would find the 3 jars of pickled okra weird, but I love pickled okra. And while, yes, vinegar, I find I prefer pickles which are cold and crisp.
MKK
I have this neat butter bell to keep my butter soft and sealed airtight on the counter, I love it. The butter keeps up to a couple weeks just sitting out on your counter and is always spreadable. Its an upside down cup that you submerge in a little water, works great. Everything else I put in the fridge even before I open it… bread, potatoes, onions, ketchup, mustard, mayo… because there is more room in my fridge then in my cabinets. Its less about needing to keep it refrigerated and more about maximizing storage space in my kitchen. In my dream kitchen, I would have more cabinets and drawers.
Factoid: Your fridge should be 41 deg F (5 deg C) or colder, and your freezer should be 0 deg F (-18 deg C) or colder to stop bacteria from growing.
My fridge is amazingly free of biological experiments right now, though there was some leftover stew that got tossed last weekend that might have started its own religion. Hard to say.
I keep a few batteries and Nuvarings in the opaque drawer under the top shelf. If I put food in there, I forget about it because I can’t see it, and the next thing I know it’s got the funk.
And then there’s the bananas. I keep tossing brown bananas in the freezer with the intention of making banana bread someday. By the time I get around to it, there’s gonna be a lot of banana bread to make.
re: Salon
I suspect that the catnip was simply kept in a place where the scent wouldn’t get out and the cat couldn’t get in.
A friend who worked in the kitchens at the South Pole Station said that they used their fridges to keep food warm.
Sad to say that my fridge is full of the usual things, including the occasional Vegetable of Conscience. (Hey, at least I’ve gotten better at throwing those out before they liquefy.)
Another possible use for those frozen bananas are popsicles – particularly delicious if you dip them in hot chocolate powder.
Also, I freeze dollops of ketchup to mix with my chocolate ice cream. Even though this is AWESOME, every person I’ve told that to freaks out just a little bit.
I have a can of beer in my fridge that came with the fridge (I bought it second-hand from a friend). I was told that the beer was good luck, and now I’m afraid to throw it away over a decade later.
We used to have some of the antibiotic that we gave our now-late cat, but I think we finally threw that away.
Other than that, the usual assortment of fruits & veggies that I meant to throw away and never quite got around to.
When my friend was about to sell her house, she had to get her old roommate to retrieve the placenta she’d left in the freezer. But I think frozen placentas are relatively common in places that have lots of midwives and hard winter earth.
In that spirit, a complete inventory of my fridge:
Beer
Water
V-8
Ketchup
Mayonnaise
Baking soda
Chinese-takeout condiment packets (duck sauce, soy sauce, mustard)
Batteries
The stuff that I eat is kept in the freezer or the cabinet.
This is an on-going, only semi-serious, low-level point of contention between my husband and me.
He wants to put everything in the fridge. Everything. He strongly believes that baked goods of all types belong there. The bread is currently in the fridge, although he goes through it quickly. He buys a pack of Chips Ahoy and puts it in the fridge. His chocolate goes in the fridge; mine in the cupboard.
Several fruits (bananas, pears, avocado) should be refrigerated once ripe if they’re not going to be eaten immediately.
The weirdest things in both my fridge and freezer are probably various fish foods. The husband really needs to get a little fridge for the aquarium room.
But we do keep a lot in the fridge; if there’s not room for it in a cabinet, it can’t be on the counter. We have a dog.
sunburned – Capers are fantastic in spaghetti sauce (even canned stuff) and on turkey or chicken sandwiches. They’re also good on any kind of salmon and in lots of salads. (I love capers, can you tell?) Oh, and the best thing to do with capers is top a baked potato with ‘em. I went through a jar in three days doing that.
As for the strangest thing in my fridge, if my brother hasn’t made one of his freaky juice blends, it’s probably one of my cheeses. I’m a sucker for any kind of cheese.
Hmm… lets see. What’s unusual or unecessary in my fridge?
In the refrigerator: Mustard, pancake syrup, and bread. The bread out here in Phoenix goes bad really fast for some reason. Pancake syrup in the fridge is just an habit left over from childhood–my parents used to do it.
In the freezer: Hard liquor and banana peels. The liquor doesn’t freeze and stays really, really cold. Banana peels smell really bad if you throw them in the garbage at room temperature, so I freeze them until its time to take the trash out.
I keep bread in the refrigerator and tea bags in the freezer (both last longer that way). The weirdest thing, however, is the ice tray with plastic GI Joes wth their feet frozen into the cubes — my son is on spring break and my guess is that he was REALLY bored today…
Jodie – We used to freeze chicken broth into handy cubes. Not so bad … until Dad put some in his whiskey, thinking they were normal.
Yeah. Now we freeze broth in plastic bags, and peel off the packaging when we need some.
I dated a survivalist for awhile. He used to pick up roadkill to skin. He was always asking to borrow my freezer but I’m sorry, I’m a good sport but I drew the line.
My brother went through a phase like that in high school, hedonistic. He never did get the various skins inside the house. At one point, he had a roadkill raccoon hanging from the basketball pole.
I lived with a woman who was terrible about cleaning out the fridge. I tried to clean out the ‘fridge when I moved in but she wouldn’t let me throwing anything out. She hated to waste food, which I understand, but didn’t seem to get that the best way not to waste food is to finish what you have before you buy more.
It drove me absolutely crazy that we had no less than 7 open jars of marinara sauce and 5 bottles of honey in the ‘fridge. I don’t care to think about the number of times I threw out her moldy pasta so I could have a clean pot. A year after moving out it still makes me irrationally angry to think about that ‘fridge. As exemplified in me just taking the time to rant about it.
I grew up in the tropics, so I keep most things in the ‘fridge out of habit. But since I don’t buy a lot of groceries and I make an effort to eat everything I do buy before it spoils I now keep a very clean fridge. In fact, I can say what’s in it without having to check.
The weirdest thing in there is a tub of red worms for my African clawed frog.
Also, warm mustard sounds really gross.
Hmm, after a nasty and prolonged bout with pantry moths – all grains and grain products live in our freezer or fridge. Homemade bread does as well.
Bananas go in the fridge immediately. The skins turn brown, but the fruit is very firm.
We tend to keep soy sauce in the fridge because we actually had it ferment and foam out of the top once.
Once upon a time, I had about 100 ounces of breastmilk in the freezer, but alas the babies have grown up. Of course, it was 100 ounces because neither of the stinkers would take a bottle. (reading that, it sounds like I have twins, I don’t, just 2 boys 22 months apart, the pregnant/breastfeeding stage was continuous from December 1997 to November 2003).
Hmm, right now, I have chocolate chips in my “fruit drawer”. Mr. Gaia calls it the “chocolate drawer”. The kids have some chocolate leftover from Valentine’s in there, tootsie rolls and I have some dove’s caramels. It’s a fun drawer.
I’m ignoring all the science projects.
Weirdest thing right now? My pet jar of native yeast (I.E. sourdough bread starter) which I must lovingly feed each week.
I’ll occasionally have live flower bulbs (With pots and soil) in the fridge for the sake of tricking them into blooming out of season. I regularly have candy in there to keep it from melting. I’ve stored active mead and rising bread in the fridge to slow the fermentation process for improved flavor of the finished product.
Weirdest thing ever was probaby a fresh, untanned deer skin wrapped in cling wrap that I was storing for a friend who does braintanning in his back yard.
I have my Sriracha (and all my other hot sauces) and the mustard in the fridge, and the peanut butter and olive & sesame oils in the cupboard. I just adopted the way my mother always set things up.
As for the maple syrup, I find that it tends to stay a little more solid and a bit less runny when it’s kept cold, so it’s in the fridge.
Oh, honey never, ever goes bad. Like, they find honey in ancient Egyptian tombs and its still good.
For some reason I can’t explain (but I’m sure the parents here could), honey is dangerous for kids under 1 year of age, but beyond that, it’s fine to eat for milenna.
I remember reading in a book by Rick Bragg about his grandparents, who were essentially hillbillies (“Ada’s Man,” I think it was called), that it was quite common to pack wounds with sugar. Now, that seems counterintuitive to me, given how sticky and bug-attracting sugar and honey is, but if they’re pulling it out of ancient tombs and still eating it, I’m not sure what to think.
Cadbury creme eggs. Refrigeration solidifies the fondant center so you can eat it without it splooging all over your hands.
Honey has antibacterial properties, but I don’t know if that carries over to sugar.
It’s the bacteria that keeps it from going bad — kids don’t have fully-developed immune systems yet, so things can potentially go haywire. I believe that people with suppressed immune systems (AIDS, chemo patients, etc.) are also supposed to stay away from honey.
(Not a mom, just a know-it-all aunt.)
It’s botulism spores or some such in honey, isn’t it?
Maple syrup will in fact ferment if left at too-warm temperatures, not a problem if you buy it in weeny little dribs and drabs but a definite consideration if you get it from farms in gallons.
Medication and syringes
Sometimes some mohair wool in the freezer – it’s easier to knit with if you freeze it for a while
One of my roommates once put my watch in the fridge because it was ticking really loudly and it was the only place she couldn’t hear it.
it was quite common to pack wounds with sugar
Sugar essentially soaks up the extra water making the environment inhospitable to certain micro-organisms. I wouldn’t recommend packing wounds with sugar (and I’m not that kind of doctor anyway — although I was a pre-med until I decided that medical school was not for me) but it does kinda make sense.
You could do the same thing with salt, without having to worry about organisms feeding off the stuff — but I seem to remember some old saying about the advisibility of rubbing salt into wounds ;)
That’s what my old roommate said when I tried to reduce the number of honey bottles! In fact, my friends loves to tease me with “honey never goes bad” because they knows it sends me into all kind of conniptions over the state of my ex-fridge.
I wouldn’t care if my old roommate had a bottle of old honey. It was her refusal to (a) not buy more honey and (b) not combine bottles of honey that drove me nuts.
Although I suppose five bottles of non-perishable honey is preferable to the egg nog I also found in that ‘fridge, in March.
(Yeah, I had ‘fridge issues, thanks for letting me air them here).
Paint brushes and rollers in the freezer. If you’re going to be using the same colour anytime in the future, it saves cleaning them (or buying new ones)!
Kopi luwak
Coffee beans keep their flavour for longer when freezed.
freezed? frozen.
I swear, my English is usually better than that.
The weirdest thing we have right now is the corn oil/flax seed oil mixture that one of our cats is on medicinally. (She gets rodent mouth ulcers, and the omega fatty acids in the oil helps keep it from happening.) Normally, I wouldn’t store oil in the fridge, but the bottle of flaxseed oil says to do so….
Forgotten bits of stuff in plastic containers are at a minimum right now, but that’s because I haven’t had a whole lot of fresh fruit/veggies in the fridge lately. :( Which reminds me…I need to go see if the pears on the counter have gone bad. :( I hate wasting food. Thank goodness we have a back yard compost heap!