Jello Pudding makes everything better.
I spent last night and the bulk of this morning writing a massive post exploring my getting-fired-from-It’s-Always-Sunny-In-Philadelphia story through the lens of gender and sex in the workplace. It’s essentially a retelling of the post I wrote on the subject many years ago, but it’s only over the past couple of years that I’ve started to understand that what I went through, while devastating, wasn’t especially unique – and I think that’s an important part of the story to explore. (I also wanted to tell the story again because my first try was terribly written and I’m annoyed about that.) I didn’t publish it here because you’ve already read parts of it if you’ve been reading RG for awhile, but if you’d like to check it out it’s over on Medium.
Anyway. I’m exhausted and headache-y from the exercise of dredging up decade-old feelings, and so today? I am going to write about refrigerators.
I love looking in other people’s refrigerators. They’re even better than medicine cabinets at showing you who a person really is (I, for example, am a person who displays hemp seeds prominently because doing this makes me feel good about myself, but who also consumes her weight in cups of chemicals every week because Jello Pudding is delicious and I don’t care). I especially love looking in other mothers’ refrigerators, because everyone has their own funny little “shortcuts” (a.k.a. ways to trick children into eating things that are good for them, get them fed NOW, or bribe them into silence), and I usually pick up a handful of good ideas.
Want to see my refrigerator? (It’s not usually this clean or well-organized. The fact that I’d just cleaned it and felt like I should document that was what inspired this post in the first place.)
In My Refrigerator Right This Moment
- So much yogurt. Oh god, so much yogurt. What is it with children and yogurt?
- Also so much orange juice.
- Also all of the blueberries in the world, none of which will end up being consumed by either Kendrick or myself.
- Happy Eggs, which is a brand of eggs you can find at Safeway and which you need to try – they’re just the best, yellowest, prettiest, most delicious eggs I’ve ever found.
- Sodas (mostly fancy vanilla creams and root beers that Kendrick buys from BevMo) and a few bottles of Trader Jose (for company; I’m a white wine girl myself).
- A bottle of something called Power Juice that has been sitting there for about six months and is likely no longer especially powerful or juicy.
- Assorted fresh green things (bok choy, cauliflower, spinach, and brussels sprouts) and a bag of radishes, because I love nothing more than watching The Bachelorette while eating radishes with butter and salt.
- A box of something bite-sized and chocolate (but never chocolate-covered pretzels; those are not allowed into this house because Kendrick and I literally do not stop eating them until we turn into chocolate-covered pretzels ourselves).
- Crumpets and buns and other bread-type things, which go in my refrigerator because they seem to keep fresh longer that way.
- Pre-peeled eggs, which is a completely silly thing to buy but did you know that peeling eggs is the worst? It’s the worst.
And now allow me to present another section, which I lovingly refer to as…
The Trader Joe’s JoyBox
In this drawer of wonders, you will find:
- Prosciutto, which I put on everything from sandwiches to salads to pizzas (our current favorite: pizza topped with goat cheese, sliced peaches, prosciutto, and arugula), and which my son adores so much that I need to tell him to tone it down on a daily basis, because it may be from Trader Joe’s but it’s still freaking prosciutto, dude. Mama’s got a mortgage to pay.
- Pre-packaged pizza dough, because I’m not sure who, exactly, has the time or desire to make their own pizza dough, but it sure isn’t me.
- Pre-marinated meats (specifically bul gogi, which we wrap in lettuce leaves, curry chicken, which I serve alongside rice with almonds and raisins, and carne asada, which gets grilled and sliced for fajita night). Trader Joe’s pre-marinated meats are THE BEST and are the only reason I have been able to keep my family fed ever since moving to our new neighborhood and discovering that the grand total of nearby restaurants numbers Two, and they are Five Guys and KFC.
- Enormous quantities of cheese: specifically mozzarella and feta for pastas and salads, cotija cheese for sprinkling over corn, and those pre-wrapped circular ones that my daughter is obsessed with (mostly, I think, because she likes taking off the wax wrapper).
- Polenta, for no very good reason. I always think it seems like a good idea to buy some, and then apply myself to completely forgetting that it’s there.
And there you go. Tell me your own refrigerator secrets! (Especially if they involve child-bribery and/or rapid dinner assembly. …Please?)
