Satisfaction Guaranteed

I was meaning to write about this last week, but I never got around to it. Last weekend I cleaned my refrigerator. I try to do it once a month, and if you know me this makes a lot of sense. I have a very particular....sensitivity to cleanliness when it comes to food. I can tolerate a certain amount of...disorder when it comes to most things, but when it's about something that I will eat, I suddenly become quite paranoid. (I think it was one of the hardest things for me to deal with when I went to China. The markets and most of the restaurants I went to fell woefully short of my standard, and so I felt mildly ill pretty much the whole time I was there. (But then I ate at a noodle stand where the cook actually had to shoo away a rat while making my lunch...LOL.) )
But getting back to my refrigerator. I pull everything out, inspect labels, toss questionable items, wash all the shelves and drawers and take inventory of what I have and what I need to use. And I always feel pretty wonderful after it's all done and clean, and I come up with some of my more original recipes because I try to use whatever is left in the frig. I find it really rewarding for being such a mundane task, and almost look forward to doing it each month!