The Real Cold War

“Kitchens should be designed around what's truly important-fun, food, and life.”

---Daniel Boulud

 I really like fun, food, and life. I mean, who doesn’t, right? It’s just difficult to make it happen in my kitchen. First, there is the issue of safety. There have been fires, concussions, slips, falls, near misses with the knives, and at least one small explosion. In my defense, the explosion was a faulty electrical socket. The rest? Ya, that was all me. Besides the safety aspect there is the fact that cooking isn’t my strong suit, organization eludes me, and I definitely get way too much takeout. When you have forty-seven packets of soy sauce and more than a few containers of duck sauce, it’s time to lay off the Pu Pu platters and have a salad once in a while.

This past week, my faithful refrigerator breathed its last. It shuffled off the mortal cooling coil and became bereft of life, after having a massive ice maker malfunction that was almost as epic as the calving of the glaciers I saw once in Alaska. The hunt was on to replace it, but before that, there were all the usual kitchen nightmares. Cleaning up melted ice cream, finding a place to store food, and disconnecting the water line became urgent tasks. There was also the stark realization that the rear corners of my fridge were populated with at least a dozen bottles of old salad dressing,  three expired blocks of cream cheese, and some shriveled up veggies that might have been cherry tomatoes at one point but were now some new species of petrified produce. Who knows what evil lurks in the bottom bin of a side-by-side? I do, and it’s not pretty. I watched the video below, and all due respect, she knows her stuff, but I kind of wanted to shove this overly organized, way too happy, neat freak into the deep freeze. 

You’d think purchasing a fridge wouldn’t be that challenging, but you’d be wrong. They have them with TVs on the front, others have remote control temperature settings from a smartphone app. They make fridges that are WiFi-enabled; some have a door within a door, which is some kind of culinary sorcery that makes me question everything I ever knew about condiments and ideal temperatures for dairy. Lucky for me, most of the ones with all the bells and whistles were out of my price range and too big for my space. Oh, and bells and whistles? That’s a literal term, not an expression. One model has a bell that chimes if the door is left open too long. Another has a high-pitched whistle to indicate when the ice maker is done. I passed on those features, because honestly, there’s enough on my plate right now, without my appliances freaking out on me too.

Thankfully, the Internet kept me from having to brave the big box stores unaware of everything I should be considering. Comparing models on websites, I was able to narrow it down to two units that were priced right, would fit, and didn’t require an engineering degree to set up. Math and finance are not areas in which I excel, so for the longest time, there was no way I could understand why the larger of the two fridges was less expensive. Apparently, in the appliance world, size doesn’t matter.  The more expensive one had an additional bin, even though it had less space, and that was the deciding factor. When it comes right down to it, every refrigerator needs a deli drawer, OK? Where else would you put the turkey, the cold cuts, and the cheese?

Delivery day arrived, and the old fridge was dispatched to the appliance graveyard, and the new one was installed. Then the games began. Milk jug Jenga, tomato Tetris, and, the ever-popular soda Suduko. As it turns out, there are tons of web pages to help. One friend, who is a professional chef sent me a graphic of where foods should go based on cooking temperatures and other factors so you don’t poison your cottage cheese when bloody steak juice drips on it. It’s a miracle I’ve not given anyone salmonella all these years because putting fresh haddock next to ground beef is a bad idea.

Sing it with me..."Hotttttt......pockets!"

Finally, everything is now neatly squared away. The ice maker and water dispenser are humming along, and the light works. But wait, there’s more!  My old fridge was stainless steel, which wasn’t magnetic, so for years I had no way to hang up those school pics, and important notices. This one is magnetic, while also being the shiny, silvery stainless steel that I love. Life is good. There is healthy food in my home, nothing is leaking (well, except my wallet) and one small section of my life is neat and orderly. Who wants some ice-cold milk and a cookie? Come on by!