I cleaned my fridge this weekend, stepped back to admire my domestic handiwork and realized I’d become a total Portlandia cliche.
My fridge is half fermented vegetables and half backyard eggs. Every container is a mason jar. Oh, except for the basket. Right. There’s a twee basket in my fridge.
You see where this urban homesteading thing leads? You think you’re a totally normal suburbanite, you plant a cabbage, get a couple chickens, and the next thing you know, you’re the kind of person with lacto-fermented cauliflower, homemade yogurt and a goddamned egg-basket in her refrigerator.
I can’t tell if I’m proud, or mildly horrified. I think I better go get some take-out phad thai to put in there before shit gets really out of hand.
Le Tour de Fridge
Throw open the fridge door and this is what you’ll see.
The top two shelves are mostly dairy and eggs. That thing in the tub with the red lid is my bread dough. Make a batch on Sunday and it will stay good in the fridge until Friday. The mason jars on the top shelf are full of yogurt. Nearly everything on the second shelf is eggs.
Below that we’ve got all my kooky ferments, pickles, mustards, curry pastes. etc. I use these plastic shoebox storage thingies to keep everything organized and cut way down on drippage.
What I also like about these bins is that they basically turn shelves (where things get lost at the back and forgotten) into drawers. It’s so much easier to access stuff at the back. Six of the cool new pint-and-a-half mason jars fit in these bins perfectly, or with some wiggling I can get five full quart jars in there.
Bring it on down past Pickleville and there’s your standard issue veggie drawers with far too few veg. In the summer there will be more vegetables than my fridge can hold, and everything will be overflowing onto counters, but right now pickings are slim and what veg we have (kale, brussels sprouts, mache, etc.) is perfectly fine in the garden until I need it.
That plastic bag on the right had a bunch of apples in it, until my kids ate them all in 14 seconds.
Under that, it’s three more bins full of mason jars! (Shocking, I know.) These contain smaller opened jars – mostly jams, chutneys, sauces, and other stuff that make dinners fast. My collection of Better Than Bouillon (don’t laugh, it’s awesome) lives there too.
Which brings us to the bottom of the fridge, and meat. I have a thing about raw meat storage, honed from years of working in commercial kitchens. Raw meat is always, always, always stored at the bottom of the refrigerator.
Anything else seriously makes me twitchy. The logic is, if the raw meat is stored above something else, like say vegetables, and it drips it’s raw meat juices onto that something, you now have the potential for a cross-contamination/food borne illness situation. Keep the meat low and you drastically lower the potential for raw chicken juice in your salad.
Even visualizing raw chicken above lettuce seriously made me shudder. Let’s move on.
I have a deep freeze in the garage where I keep my meat, the majority of which gets purchased in bulk. Once a week, I pull all the meat I’ll be using for the upcoming week’s meals from the freezer to thaw.
I pulled our weekly meat-stash, and then Homebrew Husband had a crazy hankering for burgers, and picked up some ground beef at the yuppie-hippie market. Needless to say, this is a lot of meat.
On the other side of my big ol’ icebox, we have the freezer. It’s not that interesting. Mostly, our freezer holds quick-access stuff. My random soup-scrap bin is at the very top. It’s empty because I made stock recently, but as I get more carrot peelings and leek trimmings, they’ll go in there until the bin fills up. And then – stock time again! Also up there: our giant ice cube trays for making giant ice cubes to go inside our glasses of whiskey.
After everyone in the world stopped needing CDs for anything, I repurposed our old CD bins into freezer bins. They are metal, so they don’t crack from the cold. Highly recommended freezer organization hack! I love them in this application – they corral all the bags of nuts, home-dried fruit, muffins, kids lunch snacks and the like.
Also in the freezer: jars of pork rillette from the great Christmas pork adventure made possible by our farmer friends at Adalyn Farm, jars of slow caramelized onions and duck egg creme brulee.
And that’s about it! My kooky Portlandia refrigerator, soul bared for all to see on the internet.
Erica you are weird, but in the most endearing way! I so wish I lived near enough to you to have drinks together and help each other weed.
We have a ridiculously huge refrigerator (30 cf) which often swallows things. Luckily I’m persistent and manage not to let food mold too often. Your shoe box/drawer hack is friggin’ genius! I will use it for the little portable, sadly store-bought, yogurts so they don’t roll around the back.
Now if I could just remember to ALWAY put something under the thawing meat. twitch, twitch…
Ah, thanks! Yes! I didn’t mention it, but the sheetpan goes in the meat drawer to catch drips.
Minus the Better than Boullion (we pressure can stock on the regular) and the eggs (we leave ours out on the counter) it pretty much looks like my fridge. We are a ridiculous lot aren’t we?
Ridiculous. Ridiculous but kinda badass, too. 😉
Swoon! Thank goodness I’m not the only one using BTB. And I’m off to get some shoeboxes to drawer-ize my shelves. Love it!
Thanks BrownThumbMama! Yeah the shoeboxes have made a huge difference – I love them.
Your fridge is half things that don’t need to be refrigerated. That is funny! 😉
Yeah but those ferments will stay just right for longer in there. 🙂
I too have a collection of BTB: chicken, veggie, clam, beef.
My super terrible fridge never has enough storage for fruit and veggies in the bins (which only fit in the bottom of the fridge) and freezes produce on shelves that are not sitting at the very front. My crazy theory is that the stupidly small bins are a conspiracy to get people to buy more processed food and less fresh produce.
My meat lives on a rimmed baking tray on the bottom shelf, since I can’t put it in the actual bottom of the fridge. I need to start a new fridge fund right now.
Costco sells the organic beef and chicken BTB now. Yay!
I am jealous of your fridge. lol
Also…I think we need a ‘how I make my bread’ post!! Please!
Oh, it’s a pretty basic No Knead variation. You can read how I typically do my bread here.
Except for the fact that your fridge is a LOT more organized than mine, I have to agree with pretty much everything you said. We don’t have chickens, but everything in my house seems to be stord in mason jars – cabinets, frig, bathroom – all full of the highly useful mason jars.
Also, I’ve been told that my house smells like the local health food store – Manna. I was not offended by the comparision.
So, I can empathize with the mildly horrified, yet proud sentiment. I’m choosing to be proud. Now, off to try and make my refrigerator look like yours. Love your posts.
Manna Mills?! I used to work right next to that place. I love it. Very old-school hippie vibe.
I’m in looooove with Better Than Bouillon!! There are 7 different flavors in my fridge as we speak. After I left working in restaurants, I sorely missed professional soup stock pastes. Then somebody gave me a jar of chicken BTB. I don’t think people realize that it’s actual stock and not some horrid salt/hydrolized protein/MSG concoction.
Besides the obvious uses, I use it a lot when I’m sick I just nuke a single mug of it with some extra garlic or onion and a few random cooked veggies or a few of those 3-minute noodles.
And it’s really cheap at odd-lot type stores, especially off track flavors like mushroom or lobster.
Exactly! Good stuff, the BTB. Better than the Sysco brand bases some of the restaurants I worked in used. The mushroom base was my secret back in the catering days if I was doing a beef thing and needed a veg/vegan equivalent for a guest. For example, if I was doing ternderloin, I would do a stacked marinated portabella mushroom cap all cleaned and fancied up and stuffed with walnut mushroom pate or something, and then put a red wine and BTB mushroom base sauce with it. This allowed the vegetarian guests to have the visual equivalent of tenderloin, and a very similar flavor profile, but meatless, so it never looked like they were the guest with a sad plate of lettuce and brown rice or something, while everyone else got steak.
But they really need a roast pork flavor! And I’ve only seen ham online, never in a store.
Also, you can whip up micro-batches of gravy without roasting meat.
erica, please don’t stop!
It may be a tad cliche’ thanks to Portlandia. But as an old hippie I have dreamed of having a fridge as perfect as this for decades!
You are an inspiration to many I’m certain.
FYI my fridge and cupboards now boast mostly mason jars and glass containers too just lose the plastics already! Like you I found the pint & a half is a really good shelf sized jar, very little wasted space.
Ferment on my friend!
Thanks for the kind words, Nancy! I am loving those pint-and-a-half size jars. They make a great sized water bottle too! Keep on fermenting, too! 🙂
I was thinking my fridge was getting weird with the number of ball jars both in the fridge and freezer….I’m feeling better now!
If ever you worry that you are becoming a mason jar hoarder, come see me for good company!
Guilty, but mine is an egg bowl. I love the idea of using clear bins as a pull out container to corral the contents. For heavens sake… there is no idea what could be lurking in the back of my fridge. And why oh why have I been thawing my meat daily (and often forgetting to) when I could pull the weeks worth of meat from the freezer! *slaps self on forehead as she blushes* Any way, thank you for sharing your fridge with us. As we continue to transition from processed foods, I hope my fridge will look much more like yours one day. My problem… how to get a child who has been raised on grocery store crap to like natural real foods.
Thank Miss Bee. The weekly thaw was a tip I picked up from a friend of mine, Lisa Kivirist. She gave this great presentation about the little details of frugal eating and talked about using the weekly thaw as a kind of “ice pack” to help keep the fridge cold with electricity “borrowed” from the deep freeze, which is more efficient. And then I kept on with it because it’s so much easier to do it once, and not be trying to panic-defrost meat for dinner in a microwave at 5:00 pm or something.
I’m going to second the “how I make my bread” post request!! I’m trying to get into a weekly bread baking schedule and would SO appreciate seeing how you do it.
Here’s my basic No Knead Recipe. Would it be helpful to have a separate post that lays out the organization side of it?
Just read the “Just What The Internet Doesn’t Knead (Updated)” post. One can use your post as a resource and synopsize the original with the updated notes. However, nothing will come close to your narrative, good-natured style of presentation. So I’ll be one to vote for an organizational post — whenever any free time comes your way. And BTW, I greatly enjoy the over-the-back-yard-fence tone in your posts and comments. Thanks for all your hard work.
This is very similar to our fridge. It feels totally normal, until I go to someone else’s house and get into their fridge for something. Or until someone comes to our house and it utterly perplexed when they get into our fridge. Thanks for the reminder that I am not alone in my crazy.
We don’t have the BTB because I am usually able to keep us in canned stock, but I have made my own version when I didn’t feel like canning a big pot of stock. I simmered it down until I only had about a cup and a half and then threw it in the freezer (in mason jars, of course). Great for when I need less than 2 cups of stock for something, or to skip the “reduce” step of a recipe.
If I don’t have enough stock to justify a full on pressure canning system, I’ll do that too, simmer down the stock until it’s like syrup. Then I freeze them in ice cube trays. Reducing is a much more space efficient way to freeze stock. Great tip!
You have every right to be ‘fridge proud’.
I like the idea of the drawers, I have ‘A’ wicker basket drawer on the top for my seasonal fruit. I think I’ll add more ‘drawers’ now for the second shelf, so I don’t ‘lose things’. Brilliant!
I haven’t heard of BTB so thanks for that, something to explore.
Can we talk refrigerators? I’ve got a bungalow & the big SS’s just don’t look right… I currently have two 18cuft sitting side by side on the room off the kitchen. It’s over kill I know & I’m trying to find a solution. I love the ‘full glass front’ look to show off my fresh produce & it makes it easier/energy efficient to plan meals or grab a bite. But I’ll still need a refrigerator drawer (?) for my jars & a freezer (drawer?). AND in a bungalow it’s gotta be around 24″d x 36″w max for the size of the kitchen.
Who’s got what? Make? Model? What works? What doesn’t? What about Commercial coolers?
Erica, feel free to edit if Too off topic 😉 But we all need a larder right? Especially as chefs/gardeners. Love, love, love your blog!
Thank’s Heart. I don’t have a good recommendation, my experience with fridges hasn’t led to any brand I’d recommend. I will tell you I think in-door ice and water dispensers are a complete nightmare and I will never have another. Commercial refrigeration has two big drawbacks: noise, and energy efficiency. So double check those things to make sure you’re comfortable with them before going that route. I like the side-by-side idea you have now, actually, with a basement freezer maybe. For your bungalow, if they are in your price range there are some adorable vintage style refrigerators now. Big Chill is one brand that has that retro styling. Not cheap, but cute as hell in the right home.
Thanks Erica, I do like the big chill look, I wonder if those who have them are happy.
Thanks for the tip on the wtr/ice dispensers & the commercial noise/efficiency.
*Wonder if anyone using the drawers both refrigerator/freezer could weigh in (?)
I love your blog & this post on your fridge. Some good tips here, thank you <3
Yet again you have inspired me! We are remodeling our kitchen in April with new appliances. 🙂 I am setting a goal to organize my fridge using your ideas. One question: Your soup stock bin in the freezer — do you have a cover on it? I’ve kept scraps in little baggies as I generate them but then I find that I have all these little baggies everywhere which is kind of a pain.
Yes, it’s a plastic 4 qt Cambro with a snap-on lid. These type of containers are really common for restaurant food storage. Here’s a link to a 3-pack of these containers on Amazon in the size I have in my freezer, but my guess is your best price and selection will be at a local restaurant supply store.
Your fridge is so incredibly neat! Color me green with jealousy! I’m gonna get me some plastic shoe boxes. I find too many stray jars of fuzz at the back of my fridge, and the waste drives me crazy.
I do love those plastic shoeboxes for this. Food waste is like my personal nemesis.
Holy crap, I wish I lived at your house!
Nah, I’d put you to work. “Here, peel this. Can that. Go collect those eggs.” Seriously, just ask my kids. 🙂
I use six-pack carriers to corral my condiments and small jams. I seem to have a steady supply of them…though they are a little more prone to stickiness than your plastic tub solution!
Oh, like the cardboard kind? That’s super clever! Great idea.
Awesome! I love the plastic shoebox/bin idea!
You are the only person I have ever known who could make the contents of a refrigerator into an enjoyable reading experience, and educational too!
I love your blog posts. Thanks so much for writing.
Hhm yeah… so last night I read your post and then from 9 (when the toddler went to bed) to 11:30 PM I emptied, cleaned and reorganized fridge number 1 (which already contained many (far too many) Mason jars, and which now contains repurposed plastic bins — I *wish* I had chickens, but I don’t just yet) and washed all the jars now empty of their non-edible content. Tonight I’ll do fridge number 2. And at lunch today? I reorganized my herbs and spices into 125-ml Mason jars, with help from the toddler. I don’t know whether to curse you or thank you (I thank you!), but I *do* feel productive. And oh so organized!
My only quibble is that you don’t NEARLY have enough half-full bottles of various hot sauces… 😛
I have been fighting disorganization for 2 years now I am kind of a slob but its getting better thanks to mason jars and those glass jars with the metal hardware and rubber seals, almost all our dry goods are in those and thanks to my lable maker everything is easy to recognize. My pantry is full of stuff I canned but sadly our fridge leaves much to be desired its just too small . Hopefully this year we can replace it and I will get some plastic bins, I don’t think I could even fit them in our current fridge but its a great idea. I just put Meyer lemon curd (your recipe) in mason jars in our deep freeze first time I have put mason jar in freezer I am assuming now that this is a slippery slope! L
I dream of having an egg basket in my fridge one day! I do have lots of mason jars though!
No egg basket, but I reuse cartons marked “newest”, “older”, and “oldest”. When I start to fill a third carton it’s time to find a friend to give a dozen or two away to. We have a counter-depth frig with freezer drawer on the bottom. The reduced depth makes it so much easier to not lose items in the back, but the capacity (even tho it’s wide) seems much reduced. We’d never get along with freezer drawer without a small chest freezer in the pantry. My drawer freezer is mostly zip-lock type bags of everything from prepped fruit and veggies, soup to nuts, company coffee, and mason jars of potential stock, like the water I used when I par-boiled the string beans last fall. It gets pretty ridiculous sometimes, but it’s all worth it when it’s time to make soup. Double flavor whammy if I use BTB with saved water from steaming veggies, etc. I like the idea of reducing it down to save room.
I’ve got to get a better holder for my no-knead bread dough. I’ve been using a 1970’s mustard colored Tupperware salad bowl and lid. Something with square corners would be much better. My double batch of dough will last up to 10 days and that last loaf most people think it’s got a sourdough starter since I’m using fresh ground whole wheat. Thanks for the reminder, it’s time to make some more. You have a refrigerator worthy to be proud of!
oh Janet, you live with a drawer freezer? (sorry gotta ask) make/brand, likes/dislikes?
I love the cd baskets for the freezer! GENIUS! I’m going to start watching thirft stores and garage sales for them! Your fridge and freezer are stunning, a picture of healthful organziation, I love it!
I wish I was in a position to do this. There’s six people using our fridge. How I envy you. I hope to be moving soon, so maybe I can have a reefer all to myself. Then I can use your ideas. You are way cool.
Thank you! Thank you for sharing your wonderful fridge organization ideas. You may have saved my marriage. Our fridge is one of those “sore spots” of unorganized frustrations, along with the spice cupboard. I never thought of using boxes on the shelves, ingenious! And no, you are not the, ” only freak with an egg basket”, in the fridge.
Love your blog. Ive learned so much.
Meat in the fridge? I live in an apartment and needed something CHEAP. I bought one of those aluminum pans, turkey size, for a dollar at the dollar store. It’s on the very bottom shelf and it catches any drips. I just wash it out once a week or when necessary.
I’m totally going to start using your plastic shoebox idea–brilliant!!! I don’t have an egg basket, but I have four plastic reusable egg cartons that I got at the feed store where I get chicken feed. I keep that shelf at exactly the height of the cartons and fill on the right and use from the left, then shift the containers left if I empty out the leftmost. If we ever exceed 4 dozen, I gift to friends/neighbors. Once I empty a carton, I run it through the dishwasher then add it to the right side as the next one to fill. This system keeps the eggs in date order so I can use the right age egg for the application–oldest for hard boiled, newest for mayo or sauces, etc…
I have a bottom freezer fridge and I loathe it. We’re updating our kitchen this year, and a side-by-side is on my list. We have two freezers in the garage, and I also try to do the weekly defrost… when I remember. Works better sometimes than others. 🙂 and I’m with you on the “no door ice maker” thing. Waste of space and so troublesome… 🙁
I have ferment-envy. I made your lacto fermented salsa last fall and clearly didn’t make nearly enough… It was gone way too fast. Yum! I’m just starting to learn fermenting, that was my first attempt. I don’t actually like traditionsl cucumber pickles (sorry if that sounds crazy!), but I’ve learned I like other pickled veg and salsas and stuff; however, I’ve been intimidated to try it, so your fermentint posts have been super helpful and encouraging.
And off topic for this post, but I think I’m going to get your garden planner in the next few days. I just (like 2 hours ago) got home from the hospital from arthroscopic hip surgery, so my only gardening for the next month or so will be virtual… 🙁 I’m still hoping to get something planted this year, but nothing will be started til mid-April at the earliest. And hopefully I don’t sound too drugged up. 🙂 although my husband is out filling my prescriptions, so I don’t get the good pain meds til he gets back, lol.
Anyways, thanks for all you do, love your posts! I’ll probably be re-reading many over the next week or two while I’m less than mobile. 🙂
I hope you feel better soon! I had eye surgery a few years back that knocked me on my ass – don’t worry about the garden. If you are up and moving by mid-April to mid-May you will be just at the perfect time to transplant out the summer veg starts from the nursery. If not, meh. Healing is most important. ::hugs!::
Thanks!! Definitely feeling better as the week goes on, but it’ll be 5-6 more weeks before I’m outside in the garden. I did download the garden planner–I love it!!! Love, love, love!!! It’s got me fired up for planning. 🙂
I use plastic bins from Homer in my stand up freezer… they fit 2 per shelf like a dream… everything corralled.
My fridge is Cafe style… with the pull out / dump in freezer drawer at the bottom…
great for keeping my Westie out of the bottom row of mason jars in the fridge door… he used to love licking pickle jars… but a nightmare to organize… the roll out self is easy enough… and the door that covers the “pizza box” feature in the front holds coffee and butter… but the center… chaos!
oh… and that hippy ground beef? I used to work in Issaquah… I soooo miss PCC… Earth Fare tries hard… but it just isn’t the same.
FYI: in France the ‘bloom’ is not washed off the store eggs so no need to refrigerate. Maybe because refrigerators are tiny here among other reasons. All round I think basic food is naturally healthier here than the US IMHO. Only problem it tastes too good and I’ve easily added 10 LBs.
What do you throw in your scrap box for making homemade stock? Also, are you using the “Bread in 5 Minutes a Day” recipes for your bread? (I ask because you’re refrigerating your dough.)
I just bought your book. I’m looking forward to some inspiration and new ideas. Thanks.
Will there be a 2016 garden planner and calendar anytime soon? Seriously liked your refrigerator tips. And! I happen to have a half dozen 1-1/2 pint Mason jars. Fortuitous …