Monday, October 30, 2006

Cauliflower

I know a few couples who keep nothing but a plastic gallon jug of spring water and a few condiments in their fridge. To me this would be like deciding to sleep on a box spring without pillows or a mattress. How can they live like that? Don't these folks ever eat? I know they do, they have invited me over for home-cooked gourmet meals.

When we were about to move into our house we were so excited and overwhelmed at the task ahead of us. We had to move our individual workspaces and our apartment into one location. We discussed a plan to move our workspaces slowly and methodically, while still living in our apartment, so as not to disrupt our lives. On the day of the closing, it finally hit me; we own a house! Oh my god, let's pack up the contents of the fridge into a cardboard box and go over there. We did! And as far as I was concerned we had moved. Over the next few days with the help of our friends, everything else followed. Home is where the fridge is.

I discovered that these nearly empty fridges belonging to these successful couples were not about busy lives; these couples didn't trust themselves around food. I'll admit I am a big snacker and continuous dreamer of food. I personally don't think there's anything wrong with a few dozen mini-lunches or supper-like snacks in a day. I have friends who say that's all well and good but I can't keep chocolate in the house. Another will say I can't keep cheesecake in the house. Another will say I can't keep ice cream in the house. I confess, I can't keep cauliflower in the house! Yes it's true, it never even makes it from the grocery bag into the fridge. As soon as I get home it's like I've been let out of a twenty-year prison sentence, missing and craving an important vitamin only present in cauliflower. I rip apart the hard white brain, after mixing up a blend of mayonnaise and ketchup into the inexplicably-named Russian dressing, and I dunk the white brain clusters into the pink goo and chow down happily until it's all gone.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh boy Emily- good for you! I considered blogging myself but dcided it wasn't for me...now you are committed to telling us about everything you eat! I love cooking in the fall too. soup, meat pie, chili...only sad that local stuff is wanning. Blog on, girl!

Anonymous said...

My dad, the most parsimonious man on the planet, rarely keeps more than a pack of hot dogs and some Coffeemate non-dairy creamer in the fridge (Q: if it's non-dairy, why the hell does it have to be refrigerated? I thought it was just chemicals). Imagine my disappointment when I travel hundreds of miles, and open the fridge to find a few crumbs of a two week old Entennman's (how many "n's" in Entennmen's, I wonder?) Danish ring. I don't think my father ever really learned to enjoy food, which is maybe why I do - I'll take out a second mortgage so I can shop at Bread and Circus (We're still calling it that at our house) and stuff our fridge with goodies when we are expecting guests. Once I returned from a trip to Hawaii and gave my Dad a bag of Kona coffee, fresh from the Big Island. It was still in his pantry, two years later, unopened, while he offered me warmed over coffee from a pot he had made the day before.