Eli turned seven on Friday, and he wanted pancakes for supper. Not pancakes for breakfast, he was clear, because breakfast pancakes happen on Saturdays and his birthday is special. So at 5:45 on Friday the electric griddle came out, I made a double batch with chocolate chips in half of them, and Matt fried a pound of bacon. Eli ate six pancakes, blew out seven candles on a small chocolate cake, and told us it was the best birthday of his whole life, which he also said last year.
It was also the unofficial start of my favorite and least favorite week of the year: the week I cook down the fridge to make room for Thanksgiving.
Why the fridge has to be empty
A 16-pound turkey needs about four days to thaw in the fridge, going by the USDA's rule of 24 hours for every four to five pounds. Ours goes in on Saturday. The same fridge also has to hold the mashed potatoes and dressing parts I froze last week once they come out to thaw, the cranberry sauce, three gallons of milk and whatever casseroles arrive Thursday morning. On a normal week our French-door fridge is full. So this week, nothing new goes in unless it's for Thanksgiving or it's milk and eggs.
Sunday afternoon I pulled everything out onto the island and took inventory. Fourteen bottles of condiments, three of which went in the trash. A pack of tortillas going stiff. Three ends of cheese. Half a jar of salsa. A third of a tub of sour cream. Five smoked chicken thighs from Matt's Saturday cook. A bell pepper, half a bag of carrots, a bag of frozen peas that had somehow migrated into the fridge, and the jar of pickled jalapeños from June, still going strong. In the chest freezer: a quart of Halloween chili, a pan of King Ranch chicken casserole from a September double batch, and a pack of smoked sausage.
This week's dinners
- Sunday: migas. Eggs scrambled with the stiff tortillas torn up and fried in the cast iron, plus the bell pepper, onion, the salsa and all three cheese ends. Nothing new bought, besides eggs from the regular supply.
- Monday (tonight): Frito pie. The Halloween chili, thawed and stretched with a can of pinto beans, over corn chips with the last of the sour cream. One new bag of corn chips, $2.49.
- Tuesday (office day): red beans and rice with smoked sausage. Dried red beans from the pantry and the sausage from the freezer, in the Crock-Pot all day. New: a bunch of celery, $1.29.
- Wednesday: fried rice. Leftover rice from Tuesday, Matt's smoked chicken thighs chopped up, the peas and carrots, eggs and soy sauce in the big skillet. New: nothing.
- Thursday (office day): King Ranch chicken casserole from the freezer, thawed overnight, with a bag salad. New: $2.49.
- Friday: fend-for-yourself. Whatever's left, and I mean everything.
Eli's version of this week is mostly cheese quesadillas, plain rice and apples, and I'm at peace with it.
The first thing that went sideways was Sunday's migas. Wyatt loved them, Matt loved them, Rosie ate the cheese off the top of hers. Eli announced that eggs and tortillas should never touch and ate a bowl of cereal at the table with the face of a man signing a treaty under protest. I let him have that one. It was his birthday weekend.
What I'm still buying
Clearing the fridge doesn't mean we stop shopping. Three kids still go through three gallons of milk and two dozen eggs a week, and lunchboxes still need filling. This morning's Aldi trip with Rosie was $104.58: milk, eggs, bread, fruit, yogurt, lunch things and a bag salad. I walked right past the meat case, which felt strange.
The rest is a Kroger pickup on Wednesday, and that one is mostly the turkey. Kroger has frozen turkeys at 99 cents a pound with a $25 purchase, so the cart has a 16-pound bird plus the brine supplies and some regular fill-ins to clear the minimum. The turkey goes straight into the chest freezer until Saturday morning, then onto the bottom shelf of a nearly empty fridge. That cart is $93.48.
Receipt check: $198.06 for the week if the Kroger cart doesn't change, and a good part of it is Thanksgiving.
The fridge is already a third emptier than it was Sunday. By Friday the plan is condiments, the jalapeños and milk. Biscuit, who lives under Rosie's chair, is rooting hard for the cheese ends not to make it that far.
