Every time I see a recipe with the following ingredients, my inner Depression-era grandmother winces a little. I know that I will go and buy the ingredients, but the leftovers almost always end up withering away in my refridgerator. I feel guilty every time I buy these ingredients and feel like a nerd when I tell myself, "This time will be different, I will not let this go to waste this time." And then it dies a slow smelly death in my fridge. Below are the death knells in my fridge. What are yours?
Green Onions
This gets the coveted #1 spot because you can never buy just one or two green onions, they always come in bunches of 8 or 10. I will use two or three for a recipe and then there they sit like the red headed stepchild of my vegetable drawer. Destined for death by neglect.
Ricotta cheese
Every recipe seems to require 1 cup of this stuff and then the rest sits in its container till it decides to turn an unsightly color of green and pink and moves itself to the back of my fridge.
1/2 cut onions
I hate recipes that say to use 1/2 of a chopped onion as my local store does not sell small onions. So I am left with a half cut onion wrapped in plastic that inevitably starts to push itself outwards and separates itself from its layers. I wish I had a time lapse camera in the vegetable drawer to see this happen live.
Runner ups:
Sour cream
Up till recently this would sit in the container till it turned pink (why pink? I do not know). Now I can use up to a cup and half making Mark Bittman's sour cream waffles. Great way to use up the leftover sour cream from taco night. Or just use greek yogurt... same difference.
Celery
I would buy a head of celery, use about six stalks and then watch it slowly liquify in my fridge. But since having children, we make good use of celery by making ants on a log.
