Kitchen Science or We Cleaned Out the Fridge

Yesterday Catherine and I took an hour and tackled the fridge. It's been a while since it's been completely cleaned out so there was lots of interesting stuff to learn and discuss.

Expiration dates. Catherine got a complete education on how to read those.

The glories of plastic. Catherine's been a little down on plastic lately because it seems to be an environmental bad guy but it's also an important player in food safety.

Whipped topping. When it gets old it separates and you can see it's oily component.

Dried out fruit. Some stuff grows mold, some dries out. Interesting discussion about the environment of a closed fridge ensued.

The beauty of mold. Most of what was moldy in the fridge was garden variety green and white stuff but then we found this (click on it for a much more detailed view):



White spikes with what I assume are green spores at the end of them. Gorgeous. And a bit of a neat physical parallel to our popcorn rock experiment that we've been growing outside the fridge.

Best thing about this chore? Catherine slogged through an hour of gross hard work and now revels in opening the fridge just so she can see how clean and ordered it looks. Truly one of the most unpleasant tasks in all of housewifery but Catherine committed to it and experienced the joy of accomplishment.

Here's a shot:



NOTE: No, I don't have any shame about revealing how gross our fridge was. You should know I have no shame by now.