Welcome back to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live! I am lucky to have joined a terrific group of bloggers who give a peek into the places and spaces where they spend their time.
Today's topic is What's in My Refrigerator...and I will be showing you 10 items that I usually have on hand, categorized according to rabbit food groupings.
Food
When people think "rabbit food," salad is what comes to mind...and that's not wrong. Fresh vegetables and fruits are in the Food category. Even though I'm not feeding rabbits, I do like for at least some of my groceries to be rabbit approved. Here are 3 that get two ears up from bunnies:
1-Living Butter Lettuce
Short of stealing lettuce directly from Mr. McGregor's garden, this is as fresh and delicious as lettuce gets! I love the softness and slightly sweet taste of butter lettuce. Crisp and/or bitter greens have their place, but for day in, day out eating, I rely on butter lettuce. (I also really like spinach but it has a very high oxalate content, so it is not a good idea for those of us with a history of kidney stones!) The lettuce with the roots attached stay fresh so much longer than normal lettuce that it's my strong preference. Rather than putting lettuce on a taco, sandwich, hamburger, etc. or making a salad, I eat my lettuce sort of rabbit style...which is to say, my husband washes a bunch of it and puts in a big bowl, then I just eat it (along with whatever else I'm having).
2-Cherry Tomatoes
Garden fresh tomatoes are definitely the best, but when it comes to store-bought, I am a big fan of the little tomatoes that are firm and fairly flavorful...and don't need to be cut up. I will pop them like candy directly from the fridge in addition to eating with a giant bowl of lettuce as the Food component of my meal.
3-Baby Cut Carrots
Also edible directly from the fridge, baby carrots function as what my dad calls a "salad dressing delivery system" and what my husband calls a "vector for salad dressing" in my diet. Unlike rabbits, I prefer to slime up my carrots with ranch dressing (or roast them). My husband is playing a science fiction video game set in outer space in which the carrot is described as "long considered the favorite food of Earth rabbits." Our mini rexes definitely bore that out; they were obsessed. But only with baby cut carrots. When my husband once fed them regular, unpeeled carrot that he'd cut into strips, they were distinctly unimpressed. They wanted the sweet, juicy goodness of the baby cut carrot.
Maybe Food
There are items that fit into a "maybe food, maybe not food" grey area for rabbits because they are predominantly made from plants and have a food-like quality (even though they are by no means something anyone should feed to bunnies). An always-present Maybe Food in our fridge is...
4-Flour Tortillas
Regular for Mr. St Paul and whole wheat for me, flour tortillas are a necessity for chicken wraps, soft tacos, and the lovely breakfast taquito. Ignore that thing on the tortilla package where they suggest you can heat them in the microwave. No! A wet microwaved tortilla is a travesty. Warm up over medium high heat on a dry cast iron skillet until they start to puff up and get a bit crunchy. Yum.
Used-to-be Food, aka Ruined Food
Yep, humans like to take perfectly good Food and ruin it in all kinds of ways. For example, we've already discussed my habit of covering baby cut carrots in slime or desiccating and charring them. But sometimes Used-to-be Food comes to us pre-ruined for our convenience, as with...
5-Salsa
We always have 3 types of Pace brand salsa in our fridge:
Medium picante sauce for Mr. St Paul, for all purposes;
Medium chunky salsa for me, for cooking;
Medium Restaurant Style salsa for me, for eating with tortilla chips.
I once knew someone who didn't have a preferred brand or type of salsa. She said she'd just buy whatever was on sale. WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?!
6-Iced Green Tea
I had not considered my favorite beverage to be a potential Ruined Food until my husband pointed out that green tea is made from leaves, which as a general category is Food. It's actually unclear whether rabbits are harmed by Camellia sinensis, though this study suggests to me that it should probably be avoided by bunnies. (I used to drink iced black tea but that is another very high oxalate item I now stay completely away from.)
Not Food
Some things never have been, never will be Food...and this includes anything derived from animals. A lot of Not Food gets eaten in this house, including...
7-Eggs
Yes, eggs, every. Single. Day. Hence this towering edifice of egg cartons for a household of 2 people. My husband has perfected the slightly fluffy scrambled egg, which I prefer to the flat scrambled egg, but he considers poached eggs out of scope. So I only get to eat poached eggs when my mom is around to cook them. What? Something about You could learn to poach your own eggs...uh, I think I must have misheard you. Scrambled egg not made by me > any egg made by me, you know? The last time I made scrambled eggs, I just about killed people with the truly excessive amount of black pepper I added to them.
Three other common Not Food items made an appearance in the photos above, including...
8-Deli meat for sandwiches, next to the tea;
9-Uncooked meat waiting to be cooked, next to the tortillas;
10-One dish meals packaged in individual Pyrex containers to be heated up in the microwave; under the carrots, I have chicken and black bean "chilaquiles" (made with unfried corn tortillas so more of a layered Mexican lasagna than true chilaquiles; tasty, whatever the name).
I will point out that I didn't take photos of two Not Food items my husband absolutely relies upon that I don't eat myself...
11-Milk & 12-Malted milk powder
And no, he is not 100 years old, nor (to my knowledge) did he time travel from the past; he just really likes drinking malted milk! Malt is a flavor that seems much less popular even than when I was a kid. But do you know who else liked malt? Yep. Our mini rex rabbits! We gave them a dab of Petromalt malt-flavored hairball preventative gel each day and they ate it enthusiastically like it was a wonderful treat. It's funny...when they were staying with the rabbit foster lady while we were on vacation one time, she reported that she was amazed and delighted by how eagerly our bunnies went after the Petromalt, while the other rabbits had to be cajoled into taking it. They say mini rex rabbits are 90% stomach...and that is not inconsistent with our pair!
Now that we've reviewed the inside of the fridge, let's take a moment to look at the front of it.
We have a giant poster of birds from Audubon or the like that takes up the majority of the real estate. (I actually have a second poster that I've set aside to make into paper beads.)
I love all kinds of big cats, so when I saw this cute little lion figure at a craft store (Michael's, probably), I decided to add a magnet to the back to use as a dishwasher clean/dirty indicator. But the lion was always lyin' so I gave up on that and now just enjoy it for itself.
A freebie card with a little big cat on it that I couldn't resist adding to the fridge line-up. Look at that cute mustache.
Finally, this lion is the most recent addition to our fridge door. It was on sale for $0.00 (I know, what?) at Rifle Paper Co. when I placed an order for my 2024 planner so I "bought" it. When it arrived, I turned it over back side up and gave it to my husband, saying "Now give it to me." He did. I turned it over and exclaimed, "Oh thank you, it's so sweet!" and stuck it up on the fridge. It was the perfect for-no-reason card for my husband to give me because he calls my hair a lion's mane. And even though I 100% picked it out and ordered it myself, I still love it because the lion is adorable and the sentiment is true. Sure, not exactly a Hallmark moment...though if they could normalize women picking out cards for themselves on behalf of the men in their lives, they could probably sell a lot more cards, haha.
Thanks for joining me in sharing what's in (and on) my refrigerator. I will continue to eat some rabbit-approved Food each day and hope that you will do the same.
Next month's topic is How I Manage Savings/Budget..and I have to say, I am really not an expert in this area, and I'm not sure that rabbits will have a lot to add to the topic (though I know that they do love to practice exponential growth...).
In the meantime, visit these lovely bloggers as they share their refrigerator contents:
Bettye at Fashion Schlub
Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Leslie at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After
What items are staples in your refrigerator? Do you have favorites in the categories of Food, Maybe Food, Ruined Food, and Not Food? Does anyone in your household like malt flavor? What's on the outside of your fridge?
Blogs I link up with are listed here.