What's inside my fridge?

Holy cow! Has it been almost a year?? A year?? I thought surely it had only been a few months. I guess that goes to show what a blur this last chunk of time has been. I perceived 10 months of time as about 5 months. Oops!

But I want to get back into the swing of blogging. So I'm coming back with a 'what's in my fridge?' post. I love seeing these when other people do them. I don't know why. Maybe it's some hidden voyeuristic tendency, but I find it absolutely fascinating. Some magazines have featured celebrity fridge tours, or chef fridge tours, but I find the everyday people way more interesting.

In the past six months or so I've made a big shift toward simplicity. I've made some changes to my home and to my cooking and to my life in general to simplify. I find it aesthetically and mentally pleasing. I'm guessing my fridge will reflect that, and I'm also guessing that what other people perceive as a bare fridge is what I see as sufficient. Because we eat very little processed food, we tend to just have a lot of whole ingredients and those come together into meals. We have very few 'grab and go' food items, even for the kids. If the kids want to grab something quickly, we have plenty of fresh fruit in the pantry.

Ok, here goes!

And here it is! No fancy fridge here. Just a boring, basic white side-by-side. I will say that I do much prefer side-by-sides to the over-under variety. Additionally, this is our fridge about mid-week. I grocery shop once a week, and this is about four days after I did that.

Top shelves... Eggs, of course. Though from the store, not our chickens. With the crazy heat we've been having, they haven't been laying a whole lot, so I've been buying eggs. Gasp! Yogurt(two kinds, blueberry and plain). Sour cream, veggie dip, and behind that a big ol' container of yeast.

Next row down, a pound of bacon, sliced Havarti, deli chicken breast, and a hunk of cheddar cheese(chosen by Ansel).

Next row down..... A package of frozen strawberries from Trader Joe's that are thawing for later use in crepes, overripe bananas waiting to be made into banana bread, a carton of chai, and half-and-half.

Bottom shelf.... This is where I would usually have the giant container of bread dough, but we're in between batches at the moment. A bottle of chilled wine and a bottle of chilled lemonade for guests.

The crisper drawers! These used to be packed to the gills every week, but I've re-worked how we store some items and now the contents are actually accessible. Local tomatoes, local cherry tomatoes, a container of 50/50 mix lettuce and spinach, a head of green leaf lettuce, and a giant stalk of celery. Oh! And what's left of the bag of baby carrots.

Below that, red potatoes, jalapenos(local), onions(local), and half a red onion.

And then the doors.... I so wish we didn't have to hang onto so many things. It makes me kind of twitchy to look at it. But with condiments and sauces, you're sort of stuck. I've pared down as much as I can, but I really do need these things.

Top shelf, pepperoncini, pimientos, red curry paste, peanut butter, garlic paste, ginger paste, and apparently four kinds of jelly!

Below that, the butter. Yum! Three sticks of salted butter, a spreadable butter blend, and cream cheese.

Then, minced garlic(just can't bring myself to mincing my own), dijon mustard, deli mustard, yellow mustard, parmesan cheese, mayonnaise, and ketchup.

And finally, two kinds of milk. Normally we would have two gallons of the kind on the left, which is local non-homogenized milk, but we went through one gallon of that really quickly and rather than drive way out of my way to get an additional gallon, I just picked up an easy to come by organic milk.

Next row, pickles, chocolate sauce, worcestershire sauce, salsa, fish sauce, hoisin sauce, and salad dressing.

And the bottom.... bottled water, seltzer(my newest obsession, no sodium, no sweeteners, yay!), and lemon juice.

Tomorrow..... What's in my freezer?!