What's in my refrigerator?

A lot of people probably think that their refrigerator has to be stuffed to overflowing if they're going to do a lot of cooking at home. If they looked in my frig, they might even say that we have nothing to eat, but we have plenty. Prepared foods are what's missing. My frig is like the supermarket of the 1960s -- not totally lacking in prepared items, but not packed like the supermarkets of today. Although I do sometimes make homemade salad dressing, I usually buy them. Although I made peanut butter a few times 20 years ago, I've been buying it ready made since then. (I didn't see much improvement in quality with homemade peanut butter, and it's easy to find all natural.)

The frig is actually a little fuller here than it was earlier in the day when I had more milk and less cheese -- but then I made mozzarella and chevre, and they take up less space than the milk. I had also recently made the pudding, and Jonathan had made the carrot salad.

In the door of the frig, we have a lot of things that typical families have, such as mustard and mayo, although I usually make homemade mayo. There is not much difference in taste; however, when one of my children picked up this mayo from the store, I discovered that they have added a lot of multi-syllabic ingredients since the last time I bought it. So, once it's gone, I'm back to homemade mayo.

We also have a few things in our frig that most people don't have, like rennet, cheese cultures, and wheat germ.

But as you can see, it's not overly full. Last night, we had the turkey for dinner, as well as zucchini, green beans, and corn, which were all fresh. During the winter, we'd be using vegetables from the freezer. A picture of my freezer might be more interesting, but it would be hard to see anything. It's basically full of vegetables, fruits, and meats.

So, what's the point? Well, if you have plenty of ingredients, you can make delicious meals from scratch without much work. For example, as long as I have flour, milk, eggs, and cheese, I can make quiche. As long as I have some kind of dry beans or meat or vegetable, I can make a soup. If I have flour and milk, I can even make a cream soup. If it's hot where you live, make a cold soup or a salad. For fresh bread, I only need flour, yeast, sugar, salt, oil, and water. I don't even need sugar and oil for French bread. So, next time you find yourself tempted to head out for "fast food," think again, and you might realize you already have some pretty fast food in your kitchen.

(If you can't read the labels on the photo, click on the photo to enlarge.)