Inspired by the huge amount of food that we had to cram back into the fridge yesterday after dinner:
Do you wrap or package the foods you put into the refrigerator or not? I wrap or cover everything. It may be plastic wrap or foil or a container or a bowl upside-down over a plate, but nothing gets stored without some kind of protection.
My MIL will put things in uncovered, and it makes me crazy. Right now, there’s a dessert sitting in there, drying out. It’s her house and her fridge, so I’m not going to do anything about it, but it’s soooooo wrong! Or it would be if I liked that particular dessert.
Seriously, though, dishes that are uncovered either dry out or absorb nasty odors or have stray stuff fall in. Ick.
How about you? Do you do the right thing, or do you just toss your leftovers in there to fend for themselves?
I cover everything. If I put something in the fridge uncovered, I would feel very uneasy about it. The fact that it’s in there, so vulnerable and unprotected, would prey on my mind continuously. I’d probably have nightmares about it.
Covered, or stuck in a zip-lock bag or plastic container.
I’ve been known to stick a pizza box in there, but I always feel wrong about that – like there’s too much air around the food for it to count as covered.
Not only covered, but as air-tight as possible. It’s a big pain with a turkey, but I always trim all the meat off the carcass and put it in Tupperware or storage bags, regardless of how much I just want to lie on the couch in a stupor. Refrigerators are coolers and (by definition) dehydrators, not bacteria-free environments. Leave uncovered at your own risk.
Absolutely everything in my fridge has a cover of some sort. You can thank my mother for that.
My good friends, however, are the “stuff-it-in-and-close-the-door-quick” kind of people. B-L-E-C-H.
Another thing you can thank my mother for is rinsing dishes before I wash them no matter if I’m doing it by hand or putting them in the dishwasher. I absolutely can not stand food particles in my dish water when I’m washing them by hand. I think the rinsing before the dishwasher manifested itself before dishwashers were able to handle a crumb or two.
Glad to know it’s not just me. I’ve been doing my best to get my husband to wrap stuff, but he’s got years of bad habits to break. So I do leftovers and he rinses the dishes.
Another thing MIL does is put open canned soft drinks in the fridge. I can’t count how many times I almost spilled them. Oh well - like I said - her fridge…
I’m with you, cover it up, especially with holiday leftovers. That’s probably because my mom’s fridge was always so full that anything left uncovered would prevent you from the all important stacking technique. I swear, you would throw out half the leftovers if you couldn’t put the turkey container on top of the mashed potatoes, with shrimp and cheeses stuffed in random corners.
My current fridge is way too full to let anything go uncovered, the closest I’d get to that is an apple.
Exactly. Given the number of times that someone has knocked over something and it’s lost it cover (like chocolate syrup, steak sauce or cherries) that has spilt everywhere I would never put something in the fridge uncovered that anyone was likely to eat at some point.
Leftover food gets put in ziplock baggies or into air tight containers before going in the fridge. The very idea of it being otherwise! :eek: Course I also tend to date stuff so I can know how old it is.
Me too with the ziplock baggies. If I am putting away leftovers I figure I will use tomorrow I just put them in a big freezer bag or even a shopping bag (bowl and all), pull it tight over the top and twist it closed. But I cover everything in some way.
Another Wrap everything, and wash dishes before they go into the dishwasher type, here. I just go ahead and run a sink of hot water before loading the dishwasher. I figure that if you rinse each dish in running water, you’ve used at least that sink of water. Not that anyone in the house actually rinses dishes, anyway. :mad:
I second this! It is gross! There are all kinds of germs that specifically like the temps in your fridge, and just love to leap in. Besides, doesn’t the top of everything dry out and get manky?
I definitely wrap things. I am always seeing these snippets on movies, or even commercials where something is sitting on a plate totally unwrapped. And it makes me crazy. I always think “oh COME ON, no one does that!!! Who would leave a sandwich on a plate unwrapped? It’d be dry in 30 seconds!!! Stupid lazy producers”.
But now, you tell me there ARE actually real people (not TV pod people) who do this IRL??? Wow
I think I’ve discovered why your fridge flavors your tea.
I not only cover everything, I usually transfer leftovers to smaller, more airtight containers than their original serving dishes. I can barely stand to drink soft drinks that have been in an opened and reclosed two-liter bottle for more than a couple of days, so I can’t imagine wanting to finish off half a canned soft drink that had been sitting open for a day or so. A container of baking soda is the only thing uncovered in my refrigerator.
Nope. Until the past year, I’ve lived with at home where everything is covered, and my covering of tea comes from my experiences of leaving it uncovered there and gagging when I poured a glass.
I have you all beat. My MIL puts sliced tomatoes in the fridge without covering them. It is unthinkable to put tomatoes in the fridge at all, but uncovered??? I thought I would faint when I saw it. Lovely woman, but doesn’t know how to treat produce.
