Avalanche!!

Our refrigerator and freezer are pretty bad. Surprised? I thought not. You will cringe in the coming weeks when you see what else is in this house. I thought I was done with my 10 things for today but after I went grocery shopping I had a new sense of resolve (in more ways than one). I filled up two huge garbage bags with stuff from our freezer. The below photo is "before." See that puff pastry on the bottom right? I got that for CHRISTMAS EVE. I opened the box just to see what it would look like. It was green. I was afraid.

Here is the door of the fridge, equally alarming. A LOT of this stuff was expired.

This is the freezer. The bag on the bottom right there are bagels. They are from Bagel World in Reading, MA. The BEST bagels I have ever bad. Also, whilst at the grocery store I was searching for fish sticks for Q. We had two boxes hidden in the freezer. A ton of this stuff comes flying out when you open it. That is the avalanche I speak of. Those Trader Joe's bagels did not feel good on my foot!Here is my husband. See this frozen mystery he is holding? It is a calzone which I made so we could have things to eat when we didn't feel like cooking after I had Q. That was in March 2008.Here is the fridge "After."
Do you see my yogurt shelf? Q and I are obsessed. Here's a a close up. Don't buy that Siggi's stuff - awful.


Here is the door "After." It doesn't look much different because the stuff that is on it now was in other places in the fridge. The stuff that was on the door expired in 2006.
Here is the freezer "After." We have lots of frozen spinach I didn't know about. And frozen phyllo dough. I know you can see where this is going. We also have fish sticks, chicken sausage, raviolis, chicken nuggets, and frozen fontina cheese.
My husband felt inspired by this and decided to get rid of one thing today. This hideous orange coat. Q relaxed on it and ate goldfish while I worked.

Freezer Freakout

I have a food buying problem. I accept this. I see things on sale, I buy them. I plan menus each week and buy all new stuff, not leveraging what I have in the freezer. I'm working on this. So, to kick off my '10 things' posting, what better way than to address this issue? I decided to start with my upstairs freezer-that's right the upstairs freezer. The downstairs freezer is for another day. That's where I keep all my expensive fancy grass fed organic meat...so hopefully there isn't much down there to purge. But I digress.

Every time I open the freezer in my kitchen, I'm faced with the scene below:

While this may not look disastrous, it causes me much stress. Why?

• I have no idea what the hell is in here
• My system of meat/fish on top, veggies etc on the bottom is shot to hell
• How OLD is this stuff????

So today I decided to do something about it. I rolled up my sleeves, dug in there and tossed my first 10 things:
1. 1/4 bag of hashbrowns (I used these about a month ago after God knows how long. They were pretty tasteless...and yet they made it back to the freezer)
2. 10 mini raviollis (I'd say these are at least a year old. Who saves 10 mini raviolli? I must have been planning on tossing them in a soup)
3. 3 stuffed shells (? I think I saved them for Nigel to eat when I was away. Clearly this never happened)
4. A random piece of torn cardboard (awesome)
5. 2 turkey dogs (I think..these are 1 of 2 items I went 'what the hell are these')
6. 4 sausages (They may be breakfast links. They may be sweet or hot. Who knows! It's anyone's guess!)
7. 1 chicken breast on bone (Well that's unexpected as I NEVER buy on bone. Must have been on sale sometime a long long time ago)
8. 1 bag edamame, shelled (This is at least 1.5 years old. I haven't been to the asian market since)
9. 1 bag edamame, non shelled (see above)
10. 1 bag asian bun (We love gyoza, a fast dinner on the go. But I bought these and they take about 40 mins of steaming-that does not work for the 'dinner on the go'. I tried microwaving them and ruined them the first time...so they have just sat....)
11. 2 fish patties (I don't eat breaded frozen fish. Where did these COME FROM?)

Can you identify these items from the list above?If you said 'What the hell are these, sausages or hot dogs' you would be correct. Nice color right? EW.

So, my little list of 11 above yielded the following scene on my kitchen table:While Monty looked on, horrified at his mama:
But, the good news is..after all this work, I was able to get my freezer back to some semblance of organization. Meat and mains on top, veggies and others on the bottom. Now to figure out what to cook with it all.........