Photo credit: renedepaula on Visualhunt / CC BY-NC-ND
Did you use to have a butter dish? Me too. Those were good days. Ours was made of high-grade Chinese plastic with a lid that created a snug little cradle and all you had to do is rest the rectangular stick of butter on the base and you were ready for any buttery adventure that walked across your kitchen. There was no hard butter like they have in Romania just soft American butter. A piece of cinnamon toast? Yer ready with the nice butter nest you kept in the pantry. A baked potato, a frozen waffle, a peanut butter & butter sandwich on
Wonder Bread, a chunk of instantly-spreadable butter on a delectable muffin? The butter dish always comes through. Life was just better before eaters had to rely on soft, ghetto margarine.
Today of course humans are afraid of butter in the pantry. A hot summer day is just too risky. What a bunch of ninnies we have become. Butter is strictly a refrigerator item now, kept in what I call that strange, cold space. It’s strange because it’s filled with stuff that doesn’t belong there.
What happened, I mean where the fuck was I when society started fearing anything kept at room temperature? Why is room temperature perfectly acceptable when it’s in the supermarket but taboo once you get it home? Think of all the extra beers you could pile into the refrigerator if you just removed the stuff that doesn’t go there. Barbecue sauce doesn’t need to be refrigerated. Jams and jellies don’t belong there. I know people that keep Tabasco in the frig, I mean fuck, it says hot sauce right on the label! If you keep peanut butter in the strange cold place, then you have a screw loose. Ya, but the peanut butter will separate if it’s not in the frig! No! Only if you buy the crappy organic/natural stuff. Get off your high horse and grab a jar of Jif.
As a rule, anything designed to be ingested hot should not be dragged down by something cold. Nothing kills a culinary buzz faster than squirting cold ketchup on a hot hot dog. If you put cold marmalade on a piece of toast then you’re just neutralizing all the hard work the toaster just did. Most vegetables come from a steaming hot field in Mexico, yet every sliding drawer in a frig is full of ’em. Potatoes go in the pantry, why are all the other vegetables too good for it? Anything pulled from the dirt doesn’t need refrigeration. Ya, but the vegetables will spoil … Eat ’em faster! How come pickles are in here? The entire concept of pickling is preservation … the disgusting liquid they’re swimming in guarantees freshness on a shelf for centuries.
People think that opening any jar for the first time and hearing that little plopping sound starts some sort of universal it’s-going-to-go-rotten timer. It doesn’t. Put the lid back on tight and put the fuckin’ jar on the pantry shelf.
Why is the strange cold place packed with shit you can’t identify? Is that salad dressing, nah looks like gravy? This jar doesn’t have a label or a date on it. Hey, this bottle is vapor-locked to the glass shelf. I think those are leftovers, ya but from what year? And this guessing game only applies to those items you can see. Half of every refrigerator is stocked with stuff you can’t see or reach. Tall bottles and stacks of Tupperware block your view. You get so used to grabbing the things within arm’s reach that you forget the cartons and tubes and tubs and baggies that you bought in the 90s. That is, until something starts to smell … and then someone has to don the hazmat suit and the accusations start to fly and the ultimate conclusion is: “Why is all this shit in here to begin with?”
Exactly. Here’s the fast track to a better life. If something wasn’t refrigerated when you bought it, it doesn’t need to be kept cold now. Fill the frig only with drinks, meat and cheese, and every time you buy new meat and cheese, throw out the meat and cheese you already had.
Get a smaller refrigerator and a bigger pantry.