Item: COOL WHIP
Arrived in Refrigerator: in anticipation of Thanksgiving, 2003
Status: departed refrigerator this morning
Cool Whip is OK, but there just aren't that many ways to use it on non-holidays. You might think it'd keep forever, being more polystyrosweetened foam than dairy product. You would be wrong. By the time it was finally ejected from the fridge, this tub of Whip was mottled with fuzzy, grey, thumbprint-sized clumps of spores, like someone had stirred in pussy willows.
Item: CHEESE FOOD, INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED SLICES
Arrived in Refrigerator: last summer
Status: departed refrigerator this morning
No one with a regular income was ever going to get so desperate as to eat this stuff. It looked a bit like cheese, but it sure didn't taste like cheese. In fact, it didn't even melt like cheese. It wouldn't undergo a rapid state change in the microwave, but after being left in the back of the fridge long enough it had started a slow one. At the time of being discarded, each slice had started to kind of dry out and crack at the corners, inside the wrapper.
Item: LINZER TORT
Arrived in Refrigerator: Thanksgiving Day, 2003
Status: one slice remains in fridge
The cheese food lasted so long because it was so repellent, but this homemade dessert owes its long tenure in the fridge to deliciousness. Most of the tort got et within days of Thanksgiving, but the last piece was judged far too precious for scarfing on any but the most special of occasions. No occasion worthy of this tasty morsel has yet arrived, so the linzer tort dessicates in its sarcophagus of aluminum foil. It's probably no good anymore, but it was still yummy as late as this past spring.
Item: CHAROSET
Arrived in Refrigerator: Sunday after Passover, 2004
Status: remains in fridge
We're as goyish as they get, but our impression is that no one actually eats this stuff, except in tiny pinches as part of the Seder ritual. You don't keep it around as a snack any more than you would communion wafers. (Mmm! Host-y!) Imagine you're some guy's girlfriend, and you get an irrational urge to tote a Tupperware tub of this stuff home with you from Florida, never mind that it's a sopping mess of red Manischewitz just waiting to tip over in your carry-on bag. Never mind that it'd be far easier to whip up a batch whenever you wanted some. Never mind that you'll never actually want any, and it's just going to sit in your boyfriend's refrigerator for months. Does this sound like anything you'd do? If so, then we love you just the way you are.
Item: SALSA
Arrived in Refrigerator: unknown
Status: remains in fridge
It seems like this little spot of salsa would have dried up by now, in its own single-serving plastic Dixie cup, smaller than a shot glass. It may have been the first thing to arrive in the fridge, accompanying some Mexican take-out. Someday we'll make a burrito, and we'll be glad we kept it.