More Than Living

Shelf life — (still) living without a fridge

I’m two and a bit weeks in to going without a fridge, which is a bit more than half-​​way. Everything seemed rosy until about this time last week when I had a decidedly upset stom­ach. I don’t think it was any­thing I’ve eaten…

Still, it’s hard to avoid a nag­ging sus­pi­cion that I’m not doing this prop­erly – it just feels too easy. Veget­ables last for ages if you don’t buy too many of them, it’s easy to get indes­truct­ible goods in cans or jars, and a pint of milk lasts almost exactly as long as it takes to use it. Plus I’m still spend­ing rather a lot of time at my partner’s flat, if I’m honest.

This last is both cheat­ing, and an extra chal­lenge. I’m not cook­ing at home as much as I nor­mally would be, so that’s saving a lot of hassle, but without the fridge it’s prov­ing hard to cut waste down to an abso­lute min­imum: small amounts of milk keep going unfin­ished (along with the odd bit of bread and salad) when I go away for a day or two.

When I’m around, it turns out that the main prob­lem really is one of con­veni­ence and com­fort. With no fridge, beers, juice and milk are warm, and leftovers have to be eaten in less than a day or not at all. Worse, I’m nor­mally in the habit of cook­ing up huge vats of food and freez­ing the extra for when I’m feel­ing too lazy to cook. Without home-​​cooked food in the freezer, I’m rely­ing on ready sauces a bit more than I’d like.

So, with only 11 days left to go, I’m already look­ing for­ward to the con­veni­ence of a new fridge, if not the expense of buying one. In the mean­time, I’m amus­ing myself by com­pil­ing lists of my favour­ite non-​​refrigeration-​​requiring things:

10 Rice and pasta…
9 ..and jars of curry and pasta sauce.
8 Pota­toes – espe­cially big fat ones for baking on a cool even­ing.
7 Bell pep­pers.
6 Butter – this one’s a bit of a sur­prise when you’re used to keep­ing spread or spread­able butter in the fridge, but good old-​​fashioned salted butter keeps for two weeks (so far).
5 Cour­gettes – I’m begin­ning to sus­pect that these are, in fact, indes­truct­ible, and that should there ever be a nuc­lear war they’ll be what all the cock­roaches are eating.
4 Bread – I know this is obvi­ous, but I’ve been buying sliced bread and freez­ing it for years, as I mostly only make toast. I’d com­pletely for­got­ten that it can last a week in a cool enough room, and that they make smal­ler loaves just for people like me.
3 Auber­gines – they don’t keep, but I enjoy watch­ing them rot, for I know them to be evil.
2 Chocol­ate.
1 Red wine.

Sim­ilar Posts:

• In from the cold
• Will a new fridge-​​​​freezer save elec­tri­city, money?
• Inter­est­ing things to cook when camping
• Five top tips on how to cook a goose
• How much elec­tri­city does a fridge-​​​​freezer use in a week?

Ori­gin­ally posted 2009-​​09-​​28 15:52:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

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