Andy Lien

Having a metformin weight loss buy Costco membership, I tend to get calls from a few friends asking if we can do a diaper or milk run.  Just before my college reunion, I got the call from Rachel.  And, while I didn’t necessarily have the time for a long Costco trip the night before my guests were to arrive, I made room for her.  I figured I could pick up a few supplies for the weekend as well.  As we walked through the warehouse of weaving shopping carts, she’d grab one thing…I’d grab another.  She had rice milk and soy milk .  I had some White Cheddar Cheese, Fiber One Cereal, and UTZ’s Pub Mix.  We ran into someone at the California Vines who knows of the Lutheran music scene and goes to the same church as someone with whom Rachel, as a nationally known musician, sings.  Random food, random people, random quibbles.  Actually, random quibbles are a usual occurrence between Rachel and me who I first met doing musicals in high school…as well as bouncing off of each other in French Class.  We both too frequently remark how amazing it is that we’re still friends…and good ones at that.

In the dairy section, I grabbed a super cheap half-gallon of half & half and gallon of skim milk that was about $0.17.  Rachel grabbed another one.  “June 20th.  What does yours say?”  Um, mine’s not talking to me, I thought.  Then, I figured out she was talking about the expiration date.  “Oh, June 18th.”  She took mine and gave me hers and I was flabbergasted.  I think I actually scoffed.  Who thinks of things like expiration dates?  Who cares?  I don’t think I’ve ever checked one, but perhaps I buy in such small quantities that nothing’s ever around long enough.  And, one of my faults is that if I don’t care about it, I tend to make it sound like nobody should care about it.   Or, I was just trying to needle my old dear friend.  The quibble was and then was not.  Exeunt the quibble.  We continued along, laughed over how we should-but-shouldn’t split the two-jar mega pack of Nutella, and how we used to fake that she was an escaped mental patient throwing a fit on the floors of grocery stores in St. Cloud so many years ago.  She bought me a piece of pizza for my time and we shared a few minutes and spoonfulls of soft serve ice cream, listening to her rough cuts of her new CD in the Jeep.  All was well.

Back to the expiration date thing, though.  Am I wrong?  Does everyone look at them?  I guess that doesn’t really matter…I do enough things that the Society General probably doesn’t. I tend to not return Netflix movies until they send a search party wondering if I’ve memorized the movie yet.  I don’t fill up my gas tank until at least 30 miles after the light goes on.  I tend to stretch oil changes for twice the length of time that is recommended.  I rarely deposit money right away but am usually racing to do so before an overdraft-inducing transaction occurs.  I’ve been known to buy wedding presents between the ceremony and reception sites.

And, I apparently don’t throw out sour milk until after it ruins the rest of the contents of my refrigerator.

Ugh.  The milk?  The gallon with the expiration date of June 20?  I didn’t quite get around to drinking it all right away.  In fact, two weeks after buying it when I left my apartment for a dogsitting gig in St. Paul for the weekend on June 20, the milk was a little…well…over the hill.  The plastic jug containing it was bulging a little bit and I could see through the thin wall and notice the milk, itself, had separated.  Only, I didn’t have time to deal with that frip-frappery.  I had important things to do like load a bunch of groceries (and Grendel) into my Jeep and head to an undisclosed location to throw a humdinger of a dinner party.  Sour milk wasn’t going to get in my way.

After the dinner party and dogsitting Friday and Saturday, I was going to take Sunday to make the Father’s Day run to Cokato to wish my D.O.D. (Dear Old Dad) a good one…but had been asked to bring out my purse my mother has coveted for so long.  So long that turned into too long that, in turn, turned into her being the proud owner of a Previously Owned Purse.  This meant that my St. Paul to Cokato trip had to take a short detour to Minnetonka for the purse.  As I dashed from Jeep to apartment, I thought it’d be prudent to feed Grendel his IAMS and half & half as he and the dogsat Danny had a food stalemate, neither dog eating food all weekend.  I’m not sure if it’s a depression episode or a matter of pride between the two of them, but I figured I’d best get my dog to ingest.

We walked in the door and I immediately felt the stale, hot, humid air fall upon my skin.  I’d turned off the A/C for the absence and almost choked at the heat of my penthouse level apartment.  What was worse is that something stank.  Not remotely, but with a vengeance.  I didn’t have time to do much more than spray some Lysol in the air and pour up some IAMS as I dashed to my closet for Mom’s New Purse.  I reached into the fridge for the half & half and the stench came out with it.  Guagh.  I cracked the door open further, afraid of what I would find, and I saw the most interesting sight.

Thankfully, I’d grabbed much of the CSA produce bounty for the clandestine dinner party…so, the Romaine lettuce, Red Leaf lettuce, garlic scapes, strawberries, and my brie and chutney had escaped the grips of the Death Fridge.  What remained, though, was barely recognizable.  And, I don’t mean it in a “Swamp Thing” way.  He did not go into the fridge a man and come out a boggy monster with powers of regeneration.  No, I’m talking about my Green Kale turning yellow.

I know.  Hardly reason for the high drama.  That’ll come later.

You see, I had plans for my Kale.  They were plans rooted in culture and tradition.  For as long as I can remember, Kale has meant only one thing to me: Grønkclsuppe.  My Little Gramma Ruby would make it out in Litchfield and we pronounced it “Gren-kel.”  It’s a Danish dish… “Green Kale Soup”…and one that was not made often in my Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Second-Wave Feminist Upbringing (read: frozen pizza).  I’m not sure if it’s something that I necessarily liked as a kid (being that it had a green vegetable as its prevalent ingredient), but I held it in my mind and heart as something I wanted to make as an adult to honor her.  Kind of like asking her to teach my cousin Elizabeth and me how to make Lefse…a nod to my heritage and my Little Gramma.

So, with my heart heavy with “Gren-kel Remorse,” I still splashed some half & half on Grendel’s IAMS and stared at the remaining carnage in the refrigerator…not knowing how they fared the biological warfare wreaked upon them by the sour milk.  But, I also didn’t have time to investigate.  I had to book it to Cokato.  I barely noticed that Grendel turned up his nose at his cereal before loading him into the Jeep and hitting the road.

After I’d made dinner at my parents’ house, I mentioned the milk debacle.  My mother warned of the need to pick up a couple boxes of Baking Soda…that I may have to scrub the refrigerator with Baking Soda Paste.  I though, “Oh, please.  That is just too much effort.  It’s a bottle of bad milk.  Remove the bottle, remove the badness.”

That was not to be the case.

I returned later last night, wishing to have a significant other to Indian Wrestle for the job of removing the offending party.  A kitchen bouncer, so to speak.  No such luck, I started the exorcism.  Once I’d double-bagged the carton with the Yellow Kale and taken the bag down the hall to the garbage chute for its descent into the bowels of the building, I returned to the apartment and was again met with the stench of death.  My mother was right.  It was the REFRIGERATOR that stank.

Dammit.

I surveyed the rest of the chilled inventory.  If I was upset about the Yellow Kale, my world was about to be rocked.  Organic rhubarb.  Chicken breasts.  Eggland’s Best Eggs.  (Yes, the overpriced ones that are each individually stamped…designer eggs.  There are some things that will not be defended on this blog.)  Hellman’s Mayonnaise.  Condiments, condiments, condiments.  Ham slices and provolone from ALDI (not too bad, I must say).  But, the piece de resistance was the half-gallon of half & half I’d just purchased on Thursday night.  The lifeblood of the house.  The reason Grendel turned up his nose to his dinner.

Oh, it stank.  It all stank.  I even cracked open an egg and, yup.  Stank.  Not quite like Templeton’s egg that stank in “Charlotte’s Web,” but certainly nothing to be consumed by anyone.  Ever.

It smacked.  I thought of the cost-savings measures I’d had to put into action since getting cut down 20% in salary…but had to throw out meals’ worth of food (for a single person).  I now have no ingredients for CSA Tuesday that I’ll be hosting tomorrow night.  And, even if I do buy food today to prep for tomorrow, I haven’t scrubbed out the refrigerator with a Baking Soda Paste to get rid of the stench, yet, and might possibly ruin more goodies.  Ah, the cosmos is a trickster.

Into another garbage bag it all went.  It was 10:30 at night and I was putting my refrigerator contents to their sad resting place…burying them right next to their murderer, the sour milk, at the bottom of the garbage chute.

Perhaps I was the murderer.  Like in a twisted Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy where I made my beloveds ill.

Nah, enough drama.  It was a case of neglect, pure and simple.

At any rate, I now have a new grocery list.  And, a new-found appreciation for expiration dates.

Sorry for scoffing, Rachel.  I’ll buy you some Nutella to make up for it.