Desperately Seeking Crab

My husband is so funny. I grew up in a household where the huge American fridge and freezer were always full and I think my mother made sure that we had plenty to eat. My husband on the other hand, grew up in the UK where the fridges are not that much bigger than some U.S. college dorm fridges and when he moved out and lived on his own, he kept the bare necessities in his fridge and shopped when he started running out of fresh food. When we got married, our extremely opposite views on food shopping and fridge stocking had to come to a compromise. I tend to buy foods that I feel the mood to eat when I see it and may not necessarily feel like eating it a few days later. My husband on the other hand, has a bit more a routine and eats familiar things and also eats whatever is in the house to reduce waste. He gets annoyed with me when I let things rot because I forgot I bought something and/or because my eyes were bigger than my stomach. Anyway, after living in a better, less-wasteful way, I went home recently and found it uncomfortable to see so much fridge clutter back home and so much going bad and money being dumped in the bin.

We were lucky to come upon an extra free older (piece of s**t) fridge to use to cool the excess that will not fit into our new, pitifully small (UK-style) fridge in our big Australian home. (Personally I don’t understand why the standard fridges in this huge country with big houses are not similar in size to the U.S. fridges…) This fridge is mostly used for our water, drinks and extra food that I’ve preserved or have frozen. On the outside of that fridge, he has started to use a dry erase marker to write a list of what is in there at all times so that I remember them (trust me, I’d really forget).

Anyway, to make me remember to eat things or to communicate anything to do with food, my husband either lines up fruit that seems to be getting too ripe, or leaves me messages on the food in the morning before he leaves to work (I wake up a bit later) and then I walk downstairs to see the messages he has left for me.

Here are just a couple of pictures of things he’s left me. I will add to this as I get more photos of my husband’s food communications.

This picture of the milk carton is my husband copying a Sharpie™ commercial on TV. In the commercial, a young guy opens the fridge and sniffs and tastes a carton of milk. He then writes “BAD” on the spoiled milk and places it back into the fridge for his flat mates to discover it instead of dumping it in the sink and throwing it away! So my husband cracked me up one morning by doing the same but trouble was, I DIDN’T SEE IT only noticed the writing when I sniffed it! Good thing I wasn’t going to use more than a tablespoon of it that morning (for my tea).

This was a really fragrant green fleshed honeydew melon but because some melons give me an itchy throat, I was waiting for the right mood to eat it. Why do I buy foods that cause me to suffer? Because, I do. My husband doesn’t really care for melons but was tired of seeing it on the counter for a week so he wrote me a funny message…again, with a Sharpie™.

Read Full Post »