That stinking feeling

Some years ago, I mentioned to my wife that I would freeze mint leaves, lemon rinds and olives in ice-cubes, to be served in drinks — a party trick from my bachelor days. There were two fallouts from this conversation. One, my wife accused me of not treating her as well as I would my alleged girlfriends. And, two, she said that anything I could do, she could do better. Which is why guests began to discover odd additions to their beverages. “Most people do not enjoy chocolate in their whisky,” I said to her. “Tomatoes do not lend flavour to Coke,” I pointed out. “Cocktail onions can be served alongside but not in mixed drinks,” I suggested. It wasn’t till her friend Sarla told her to cease that my wife stopped further experiments with ice and incongruous ingredients.

I thought she had rediscovered that mojo last week when I popped ice into my sundowner and found it contained some manner of nuts and seeds. It also muddied the drink, so I had to throw it away and make myself a fresh one. What was in the ice was soon resolved. My wife likes to store peels, pips and other detritus from the kitchen for composting. In this heat, if it isn’t taken immediately out, it begins to rot. To keep it from smelling, my wife had popped a bag of fresh garbage into the freezer that had leeched into the ice-trays. 

If you thought that was the grossest thing to come out of the fridge, you’d be wrong. A few years ago, caught on the wrong foot by guests who stayed for dinner when we had invited them for drinks, my wife ferreted around for things to thaw into a quick meal. But the frosting on the packets made it difficult to tell their content, so she decided to chuck one into the microwave oven. Soon, an odour not unlike a laundry filled the kitchen. The packet turned out to be a bag, long thought lost, of my son’s briefs that he liked to keep in the fridge to keep cool before wearing. We ordered takeout. 

You’d think that might have taught us a lesson, but cracked bottles of beer and wine are routinely removed from the freezer. My daughter, who enjoys bursts of deep cleaning once every blue moon, will pull out jars of preserves, condiments and sauces, packets of imported salmon, chocolates and cheese, all long past their expiry dates. You’d think that might free up space and allow fresh produce in. You’d also think my wife would be hostile, but her reaction is strangely gleeful. “Oh, salmon,” she’ll exult, “let’s invite Sarla for dinner.” “I’m not touching the salmon, Mom,” my daughter will say. “You can have the potatoes,” my wife will suggest, “but I’m not wasting the salmon. And Sarla served me stale food last time.” 

She likes us to eat our food cooked fresh from ingredients that aren’t. Only, she forgets what’s in the deep-freeze too often. Last night’s risotto caused soap bubbles to form in my mouth because the cheese my wife thought she’d used was actually laundry soap she’d put away. And to think I had to wash my mouth out with it when I hadn’t even said a bad word — only thought it.