Stomachs on legs are proud to present

This is my fridge in Thailand where only cooking I did was cooking rice (and go buy something to eat with rice) and cold noodle occasionally:


Left side:

• soy milk
• butter
• tempura crispies from Japan (brought back for a takoyaki party at my friend's)
• shelled tamarind a villager gave me
• Leo beer (giveaway from a party back in... winter, I just do not drink by myself)
• lychees,
• isotonic drink left over from my flu hospitalization last year (I never drink it except when I am sick),
• organic roselle jam,
• organic pickled plums,
• organic soy sauce,
• miso that I never cooked, and
• eye cream (so they don't go bad in the Thai heat).

Right side:

• shiso powder,
• ground organic black sesame (good with cold noodles),
• leftover isotonic drink powder,
• rustic cane sugar blocks a villager gave me,
• facial toner,
• sugarfree Mentos,
• wasabi,
• rice germ sprinkles,
• brown sugar,
• organic jasmine rice, and
• the Thai refrigerator staple: drinking water.

Right now I am sharing an apartment with two Taiwanese people in the US, so sharing the fridge as well:


Not much of the stuff is mine.

I put:

• organic soy milk,
• cage free eggs from "vegetarian-fed hens",
• butter,
  
• multi-grain English muffins,
• Cabot cheese,
• organic soy sauce,
• leftover black beans,
• organic mushroom pasta sauce,
  
• plum tomatoes,
• red onions,
• yellow Spanish onions,
• zucchinis, and
• an unopened jar of kimchi (made in New York).

I am not sure why somebody is refrigerating a box of dry pasta.

And a freezer that seems to resist frost a lot better than my Thai fridge:
Half of the bottom row is my stuff:

• frozen spinach,
• frozen peas & carrots,
• frozen sweetcorn niblets,
• frozen vegetarian dumpling, and
• frozen blueberries.

Somebody seems to believe that used brita filters work as a deodorant in the fridge and freezer. Does it work??

The money shot. Click on the above fridge for annotated Flickr.

There is something that I deeply enjoy about the trend of food bloggers to post the contents of their unstyled refrigerators because it is a nice glimpse of normality amongst the soft-focus shots of cupcakes, or whatever the hell passes for food over at tastespotting.

Mine looks like a sad indictment of my eating habits and is probably of more interest to future cultural anthropologists than to the present day; a random mix of Asian food and white bread middle class.

Until I had to label them, I thought that I owned a more diverse selection of condiments. Random sauces and jams that don't require refrigeration end up there like I've been possessed by a limited bout of dementia.

Hock and I are both currently living in different countries in studio apartments

Yes sad, I know. I'm currently in Bangkok though, but only for a two week conjugal visit.

But given that we are both facing the challenges of living alone and cooking in kitchenettes (two stove top elements, no oven, microwave) I thought I would begin a series on kitchenette cooking solutions

My most recent ingenious solution, if I do say so myself is pressure cooker dumplings

Take said frozen pre-purchased or pre-made dumpling from your freezer and place in a bamboo steamer



Place a cup of water and a rack inside your newly purchased pressure cooker

Place bamboo steamer on rack

Secure pressure cooker lid and place on stove top. Bring to pressure, reduce heat and cook for 15 minutes.



Turn off heat and let steam release slowly

Eat dumpling

This seriously speeds up the cooking of frozen dumplings. It also works well for sticky rice parcels, various bao and other steamable items

I haven't managed to figure out precise cooking times for different items, but I find between 15 to 20 minutes does the trick

After I have been gone to my mountain hood for another few days... I saw big ice sticking out from the internal freezer.

It took me a while to realize what kind of catastrophe my fridge was having. Well, it came with the room and I didn't buy it, so it's actually not my fridge but it is the fridge I am renting with a room, to be precise.

The picture below was actually taken after having gone through a couple of hours defrosting it... the ice got so big that initially I couldn't even move the inner door or the defrosting tray underneath.


For some reason this picture reminds me of Winnie-the-Pooh that got stuck when he was trying to fetch honey.

After a few hours of defrosting I was able to remove just the tip of the iceberg and the door could be opened.

I threw in the French butter, Belgian chocolates, and the Dutch stroopwaffels I brought back from Europe (except butter) in the wee bit of space in the giant ice so they don't spoil during the defrosting process, which literally took twelve hours. Hello, do I really live in the tropical climate?

The fridge is not even those questionable unknown brand but Whirlpool... I don't know what to do other than setting it to "minimum" to prevent the future catastrophe.

This is the biggest freezer ice I've ever seen after the very crappy dorm-fridge I used in a college dorm years ago.

Oh, my.