Yesterday I went on an epic, sentimental condiment-al journey deep into the recesses of my fridge. At the end of it, I realized one very startling fact. My goddess, I have a crap-load of condiments.  Here’s a sampling of what I found in my fridge:

• Not one, not two, but three jars of almond butter? What the hell was I thinking? That I needed almond butter, obviously. And a bigger hard-drive for my memory…sigh.

• Sambal Badjak that expired in 2004.  (That I bought the last time my cousin Peter visited me, at a little shop in the Byward Market, in Ottawa. (Obviously hanging onto this one for sentimental, not condiment-al value – that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)  How this missed previous fridge purges, I can’t explain but really…I have cleaned my fridge a time or two since 2005, OK?

• Red pepper jelly, 2 kinds of apple butter (regular and…drool…caramel), designer vodka-infused mustard, one lonely roasted red pepper floating in its jar, pesto…all things so tasty but that I (almost) never remember to eat or cook with.

• Expired salad dressings – some bottles, mostly packets from fast-food joints. I always find these every time I clean out the fridge. I think elves sneak them in there, when we’re out. Yep, for sure it’s elves.

• Flaxseed oil that expired in 2009. Probably didn’t want to throw it out despite the expiration because it was expensive. (Like that makes any sense at all, I know!!) Is this how hoarders get started?!?!

• Humungous pimento-stuffed olives, from my martini drinking  drinking days (prior to 2003!).  Note to self:  still look good, must remember to use up on pizza…

In my defense, they were almost all on the topmost shelf. You know, the one that you have to bend down to truly see the contents of.  And, no doubt you’ll be relieved to know that most of the condiment jars did end up dumped and rinsed, and in my Blue Box for recycling.

So now I have a sparkling, mostly empty fridge – ready to be filled up with healthy goodies. And no big bottles of salad dressing!!! I think I’ll make my own from scratch from now on, just to prove that the elves are at work here.

New Topic – beautiful, bizarre bike:

Can’t really think of a good segue to these photos, except to say that perhaps elves were at work here too?

Anyhoo, I leave you with a shot of this awesome bike fiets we saw in Amsterdam during our May trip. Say it: “feets” (bonus Dutch lesson in this post, again no phlegm required!). We saw a lot of bikes decorated with plastic or silk greenery/flowers, but this one was OVER THE TOP: