Where Bar Fruit Goes To Die

One of the more disagreeable tasks in the kitchen has to be cleaning the crisper drawer. And that is because you never know what's lurking down there, what kind of squishy, putrid mess is sloshing around underneath the lettuce.

To my mind, crisper drawers are a bad idea, especially the big, deep ones we have that seem to invite a jumble of items, exactly the kind of environment where little bits of things can be quickly stashed, then forgotten, only to make a home for one kind of mold or another when nobody is paying attention. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of order. What I try to do is keep things organized in Ziploc bags.

I knew it was time to bite the bullet and empty the crisper drawer when I noticed not one, not two, but three separate bags of grapes flopping around in there. This is what I found:

2 fairly old knobs of ginger
1/2 yellow onion, bagged
2 old limes
An open bag of carrots
A small bag of arugula from the CSA, weeks past its prime
4 grapefruit of various sizes
4 oranges
2 clementines, one partially peeled
2 giant radishes from the CSA box before Christmas
A piece of horseradish
1 head broccoli
A Ziploc bag containing 2 cooked fingerling potatoes and a small handful of cooked edamame, at least two weeks old
A fennel bulb
3 bags of grapes, one contiaining just six grapes
3 loose grapes

Unhygenically, there is also half a stewing chicken that arrived in the CSA box Thursday. (It was a whole chicken, but we split our share with friends Helen and Jeff.) Uncooked poultry really shouldn't be stashed with fruits and vegetables. But we are making the food for a friend's birthday party: The rest of the refrigerator is stuffed.