Universal constants of kitchen foods

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

There are some truths so ancient, so timeless, so eternal (so redundant), and so universal, that I’m surprised that Einstein did not try to fit them into a Theory of Everything. And some of these thruths leave evidence all around your kitchen. Let’s examine a few:

-The “heels” on a loaf of bread are mere packaging. They should be discarded much as you’d discard the wax coating on gouda cheese.

-The top (whole) slice in a loaf of bread is not only stale, it is pure poison. In fact, to be on the safe side, one should reach down by at least 3 or 4 slices.

-Any sandwich not made from slices of bread which were originally adjacent to each other in the sleeve will not line up, thus causing a rift in the space-time continuum. This will render the sandwich inedible.

-If you move into a new home with a completely empty kitchen, within a year a steamer basket will materialize in a kitchen drawer. A working hypothesis is that said steamer baskets are actually synthesized from lost socks.

-Old jars of jelly don’t die. They quietly migrate to the back of the refrigerator where they form a thin pool of colored water on top.

-By state and federal law, every refrigerator in the US must contain a jar full of pickle juice. No said jar may contain more than 1 pickle slice.

-The best condiment for a hot dog is a tablespoon or two of clear, cool water. Mustard squeeze-bottle dispensers know this.

-Every refrigerator contains the wadded up remains of a butter wrapper. In some cases said wad will have 1/8 teaspoon of rancid butter at its core. This must not be discarded under any circumstance.

-Every refrigerator will have, at the back of the middle shelf, a small hard nut. This object was likely once a citrus fruit.

-Every pantry contains a box of spaghetti with no more than 3 strands of said product therein.

-No plastic container has a matching lid. No lid has a matching container. Every paired set has absconded from the home, each likely containing a single sock.

-The stuff in the strainer has a mind of its own.

2

I forgot some:

-Archeologists have theorized that an entire loaf of bread may be extracted and reconstructed from the fossilized remains in the honey jar.

-There is a lethal weapon in the kitchen. It it a blunt, brick-like weapon. It is usually labelled “brown sugar.” Look for it next to an unused box labelled “Argo Corn Starch.”

-Another lethal weapon is the little slicer on the edge of the cling wrap box. It will cut through anything, including skin. The only known defense is to make a set of armor composed primarily of cling wrap.

3

Cling wrap will cling to cling wrap. Everything else is immune to its clinginess.

There is one small puddle of something that lives in refrigerators. Wiping it up is useless. Like a tribble, it is born pregnant and has already laid tiny hatchlings by the time you find it.

Corn syrup is the universal solvent and will dissolve any container. Fortunately it is very thick and only oozes out very slowly.

4

You will not clean out the refrigerator and discover a bottle of white wine until the day AFTER you have made a special trip to the store to buy a bottle of white wine. The correlation is you will tear the kitchen apart looking for that special utensil, deem it lost, then find it after you buy another one.

The kitchen is never big enough, you will never have enough cabinets or counter space.

Children, when told to do chores, will stack the leftover meatloaf on top of the loaf of bread. They will also leave a carton of eggs in a hot car for six hours, which is eventually discovered by their mother.

You will buy yourself a treat, maybe a raspberry yogurt with chocolate chips. This is just one carton amongst ten or twelve of blueberry or strawberry banana. Your 16-year-old son has the homing instincts of a fruitbat and will inevitably find your special treat yogurt within 15 minutes of you putting it in the fridge. He will then innocently ask if he can have a yogurt. You, distracted with trying to figure out where you slipped a stitch in your knitting, will nod absently. Two weeks later you will wonder what happened to your special yogurt.

Leftovers, no matter how good the initial meal, do not weather well. Figure if no one eats it in a week, it won’t be eaten at all. Toss it.

Alton Brown has neat utensils, so much so that your husband will want them. In addition to the KitchenAid mixer and the digital thermometer, we also have a digital scale.

5

But it will not cut through cling wrap. As you try to tear off a piece of wrap, the hanging part it will fold in on itself and become a wadded-up mess. If you try to help it cut itself off, you will end up needing stitches in your thumb.

Condiments have the amazing ability to turn themselves invisible, so when you are checking the contents of your refrigerator before a shopping trip, you will think you are out of things like relish and mayo and ketchup. Upon your return with a fresh supply of said condiments, you will realize you already have plenty.
This is referred to as Condiment Stealth Mode.

Wooden spoons and rubber spatulas have the ability to reproduce on their own. This is why when you start out with just one of each, within a few months, you have several.

As a corollary to the pickle juice rule, all refrigerators must contain a jar of maraschino cherries without the juice, or conversely; just the juice without the cherries. You are not allowed to throw this away.

No matter how well you claim to wipe off (or lick off) the top of the chocolate syrup bottle, some syrup will mysteriously rise up and ooze out, so that a drippy mess forms on the top of the bottle.

6

Chocolate syrup bottle volcano masses taste far better than dish soap bottle volcano masses.

7

Every refrigerator has that one container of mayonnaise or jelly that’s been there so long that you’re not sure it’s still edible. But you don’t throw it away.

Corollary to the above: when you break down and buy a new jar, once you open it, you’ll forget which is the new one and which is the old one.

8

While socks and tupperware lids escape, grapes merely hide under the fridge. They are planning a coup of your kitchen.

Your fridge probably has some special containers on the door. There are usually twelve of them. They resemble the size and shape of eggs. They are most useful for storing garlic paper and dried brown liquids.

9

Every pantry will have one unidentified baggie of white powder. (Is it flour? Is it corn starch? Is it baking powder? Is it Columbian cocaine?) It will never be thrown away, and never be used.

Every pantry will have one half-empty bottle of molasses which, despite bi-annual cleaning, will always be sticky to the touch.

(This one may just be me). Yes, we have brown sugar. Yes, we really do. No, you do not need to buy brown sugar. Really! It’s there! Three bags, in fact! OK, maybe just pick it up anyway, just in case you’re not remembering right. It’s only 89 cents… :smack:

10

Billy Joel’s “Only The Good Die Young” Law: The better the leftover, the sooner it becomes inedible. Leftover chocolate cake gets stale in about 1/2 hour. Leftover fruitcake can survive a move, three winters, two weedings, nine parties, and will still be edible.

11

You might want to rephrase that.

The twisty top of the squeeze bottle of mustard will always be open. If you try to twist it shut, a small amount of mustard will ooze out the top. This will be crowned by a small yellow O-ring.

12

Amen to that. One of my roommates and I have lived together for the better part of 7 years, and we’re on our third apartment together. At any given time, there are THREE JARS OF MAYONAISE in our fridge. Two unopened, one frighteningly opened.

I do not eat mayonaise.

Roommate doesn’t eat mayonaise.

I certainly didn’t buy it. Either did roommate. Third roommate moved in well after the 3 jars were ensconced in our fridge.

We think the mayonaise follows us from apartment to apartment, because no one knows where it came from.

13

In your freezer you will have a smallish package of white butcher’s paper with no external markings on it whatsoever. Could be fish, could be chicken. You’ll never know and you’ll never throw it away.

14

I love this thread. Partly because it’s horrifyingly accurate.

15

The rule of milk: You will buy enough milk to last a week. Instead it will go bad before you drink even half of it and you end up pouring most of it out. Next time you go shopping you buy a half gallon instead. You will run out in a day. This finally results in a state of either having 3 gallons of milk in the fridge, or having none.

This rule can also apply to bread.

16

The universal law of the expansion of spills and its effect re: color and material relatedness: Whenever a liquid is split, its expansion rate will depend the color and material of the object it is split upon. Spill a cup of cocoa on brown tile and it expands to 1 1/8 cups. Spill a cup of cocoa on white linolium and it expands to a quart. Spill a cup of cocoa on a white shag rug and it expands to a gallon.

17

Even if you write the date on each new spice container, you will have at least one spice that’s so old, it doesn’t have a UPC on it. You’ll also have one spice you don’t recognise and have no idea why you bought it.

If you usually come home from work and immediately get a cold drink, you will eventually leave your car keys in the refrigerator.

Inside your freezer, there is a foil-wrapped package containing another foil-wrapped package, containing nothing at all. You must notify Dan Brown.

18

Bananas are impossible to nail when they’re in the perfect state of ripeness. If you do manage to eat most of them when they’re decently ripe, you’ll horde one last banana for some mysterious banana-recipe emergency until one day you look and the thing has turned to liquid-in-a-peel.

19

This applies equally well outside of the kitchen: The chances that you ordered spaghetti in marinara sauce for lunch increase dramatically when you discover that you wore a white shirt and your best silk tie. Those chances increase exponentially if a job interview or date is on your schedule for today.

20

If you wear a white shirt and silk tie and get a pinpoint of white clam sauce on it, it will increase to 1 1/2 pinpoints. A pinpoint of red clam sauce will become a cup.

Reverse these figures if you a wearing a black shirt and blue silk tie.