If you have ever seen the movie or read the book ‘Cold Comfort Farm’, then you’ll be aware of the line “I saw something nasty in the woodshed”. That line was almost used on me yesterday, only it was the fridge in question not the woodshed and it was Idgy hollering it from the kitchen.
I pulled myself up off the sofa (obviously I had just that moment passed it and fallen into it’s depths, heaven forbid you should think I spend any time there!) and ambled through mentally seeing the fridge and thinking I’d just cleaned it the other day and it was nicely full of smoothies etc for the sleepover Idgy had had the night before.
I’m just imagining a knocked over smoothie as I open the door and find a brown mess everywhere. This ain’t no smoothie. Good gracious, quelle surprize, golly gosh and lots of other words far too colourful to type, whatever has happened.
The mess had pooled on the bottom of the fridge and blocked the drainage hole at the back. This had of course decided to join in the party and overflowed with water to form a mini lake with this nasty brown sticky stuff.
Looking from the bottom you could see that each shelf was welded to its runners by this goo. I couldn’t work it out. I stood there picking things up and just looking at them wondering what the heck had happened.
All the juice cartons were in order but everything was literally coated in what looked like treacle or molassis.
There was only one thing for it, haul everything out and salvage what I could. It wasn’t till I got to the top shelf that I found the culprit (or what was left of it), a burst plastic bag that had contained the rose preserve I had been making for the past few weeks. It should be gently mixing and blending amid sugar and rose petals. Mine had for some reason chosen to escape the confines of the bag and redecorate the fridge. It hadn’t so much oozed out as exploded. It had set like glue in just a matter of hours.
Since I’d been making lemoncello yesterday I had a bowl of lemon skins that I’d pared and squeezed. They were pressed into service as a cleaning aid along with a pot of bicarbonate of soda.
How To Clean Fridge Naturally;
I filled the lemon skins and just used them instead of a sponge, then a quick rinse and wipe with vinegar.
The horrific mess was gone easily using the homemade cleaner, but sorting out the yucky food was another matter.
So here’s todays home hint – never think an innocent rose preserve will stay in the bag you put it in, the word lock in ziplock bag does not mean completely secure.
Don’t even think of trying to use a sticky coated lettuce, just bin the damn thing,
and always keep your lemon skins, they can clean anything!
Have a great weekend.
Karon x
Hi Karon, can you share the recipe for rose preserve, thanks,Daisy
It is a horrid experience, isn’t it, Karon. I once returned from 4 weeks holiday to a nasty experience in our pantry. In the poor light, I thought we had a tiny black kitten curled up in my old cane shopping basket, I quickly put both hands in to lift the ‘little mite’ out, only to find the soft kitten was a soggy, mushy goo! Thankfully it was not a decomposing corpse of a kitten, it was half a pumpkin I’d forgotten to toss out before the holiday! I didn’t use pumpkin again for years!
Susan
Oh Susan,
You made me laugh first thing on a Monday morning when I read your ‘kitten’ story – love it!
Karon x
ROSE PRESERVE
1 cup of fragrant rose petals
1 cup brown sugar
smush together in plastic bag and seal well (yes this is where things went a tad wrong with me!). Store in fridge and smooch it about every couple of days. Eventually sugar and petals dissolve together to a brown fragrant sweet mush. I have no idea how this tastes as it was welded to the entire fridge, but that’s the recipe!
Kx