Skeletons in the Fridge

I just performed a good old-fashioned fridge cleaning, complete with tunes, a bandana on my head and a dog to talk to. Most people know me as a fairly messy person— truly one of the greatest accumulators of stuff the world has ever known. This, of course, I can’t deny. After all, I still have little treasures from some 19 years ago when I was a first-grader (I bet Mrs Ozols never suspected that I’d hang onto that plastic parrot for so long, but I saw it just the other day, still as blue and breathtaking as it was to my 6 year old eyes).

Mrs Ozols aside, there is another facet to the being that is Kiff: the obsessive neat-freak side. I don’t go on cleaning rampages very often, but by God, when I do, it is a beautiful thing. I’m a scraper of nooks, crannies and crevices; a scrubber of corners, cupboards, shelves, drawers, doors, floors and more. On my list of favourite tools with which to clean is the toothpick. I need not elaborate!

In my foray into the fridge this evening, I came across some interesting items, but would like to focus on one drawer in particular. In this drawer there was a very eclectic collection of various cheeses, ranging from mousetrap (read: extra mild) to rotten sock (read: Cooke’s famous extra old) to ersatz (read: pre-packages slices). There was Camembert (German and Danish) Parmesan and several packages of blue cheese (extra creamy and regular). The blue cheese I approached with extreme caution, falling just short of breaking out the old Hazmat suit. I peered into one of the packages suspiciously… Now, I am no great authority on cheeses of the world— no authority at all actually, and so I proclaimed it mouldy and stacked it neatly with the others. Then I got to the feta. I asked myself:

1)Does feta cheese go bad?
2) How does one know if feta cheese is bad?

It’s always floating in that juice, which I always assumed had serious feta-sustaining capabilities. Incidentally, not the case. After one glance and one sniff I answered my own questions about this curious crumbly cheese.

1)Yes, it does go bad.

Coincidentally, the answer to question 2 is the same as the answer my Mom gave when I asked how I’m supposed to know when the right man comes along:

2)‘You just know.’

Perhaps I shouldn’t compare true love to spoiled Greek dairy products… but there you have it.