A week without groceries and the Fridge of DOOM!

I’m not entirely sure how I achieved this, but after my long weekend in Sydney I managed not to go grocery shopping. This is a big thing for me.

I like groceries, I like cooking myself dinner – and I need a full lunchbox to get through the day. This is one of my notable eccentricities. I always have a lunch box full of tasty bits and pieces. I was packing my own lunch right through late primary and high-school and I just carried the habit on into uni and work. A few uni friends began referring to it as “the magic lunchbox”. I think they had the idea it was bottomless or self-replenishing. (I now have a tin Batman lunchbox I got myself as a “you’re a solicitor now” present – it holds easily the banana, apple, muesli bars, piece of chocolate and sandwich it takes me to get through the day.)

So, anyway I save heaps of money every week by making myself a sandwich for lunch on “school days” and buy myself a CD with the money I save. But the bottom line is I am a thin boy with a hummingbird metabolism; I need to snack regularly not to get grumpy or weird. (Mornings in court can be really trying on that front. Very hard to snack in front of a judge.)

All this food does tend to add up, so there is some saving in not shopping.

How the hell have I got through this week, though? Well, the Monday flight back served a psuedo-dinner and I had toast when I got in. At breakfast there’s been enough porridge to scrape by, and there’s been cream in the fridge that hasn’t gone off yet. (More on the Fridge of Doom later.)

I also had a “this is one I prepared earlier” emergency tuna-and-pasta sauce in the fridge, that got me through Tuesday and Wednesday dinner. (Last night was a couple of bolted sausages before catching up with Beth of fridaysixpm at Kelvin for drinks, again.) Lunch one can go out with work colleagues, especially with this many farewells on. (All the guys at my level are leaving in the next month, with a very few exceptions; their contracts are up and they’re off to greener pastures, dammit.)

The more surprising thing than meals has been scraping though the day without snacks. “I like snacks … No, my snacks, it’s OVER!” (One for the Zim fans.)

I’m surprised I haven’t gnawed the leg off passers by yet. Fortunately there have been farewell afternoon teas, sometimes recycled into morning tea the next day. I’ve poached fruit (with permission) from my flatmate. Somehow, I’ve scraped by. So maybe I can wean myself off the snacks …

Anyway, there’s a strong argument against buying groceries to begin with – my flatmate/landlord’s Fridge of Doom. The thing is an environmental menace: it leaks cold (thermodynamically impossible, I know, but anyway) making it very energy inefficient; and it doesn’t really keep things too cold in summer, making it a health hazard. Thickened cream (for my porridge) will keep for maybe a week in a cool spell, and we haven’t had much of that this bushfire season. Last night’s dinner of sausages were my flatmate’s new sausages; he’d had to throw out the ones I’d bought just before going away for the weekend.

Basically, if you buy groceries, you’re on a hiding to nothing as the Fridge of Doom wages attrition warfare on your investment in healthy fresh food. Still, we are apparently at risk from too little bacteria exposure in modern life, so maybe my game of domestic salmonella roulette is good for me.

I am not really used to living like this.

According to this crap survey (the gendered assumptions nearly drove one friend to distraction) I am “balanced” as between my masculine and feminine sides, and not the sort of lad’s lad who thinks cleaning the house is a bi-annual event and that domestic hygiene was something one did to the servants last century to prevent lice outbreaks. Further, as Marissa has so kindly pointed out in the guestbook:

… the current running theory [is] that he is, in fact, a lesbian woman trapped in a straight man's body. Sorry Doug, couldn't resist. OK, maybe I could have. But I'm eeeevil.

Yeah, cheers mate.

Still my Fridge of Doom does not compare to one share house I knew in Canberra that had a second fridge that kept an even 14 degrees centigrade year round. In a Canberra winter they would have done better leaving the fridge door open to heat the house.

Hmmm … I wonder if my new comments system is working?

Seems not, so comments here.