The Mismatches

Before a departure in either direction, we have a day or two of cleaning out.

This involves mostly the refrigerator and the closet.

About 10 days before we leave, I stop buying all perishable food that we won't need immediately. I usually stop grocery shopping almost completely. For a few days, it's OK, we have everything we need.

As the departure date gets closer, things get a little bleaker. We have lettuce but no tomatoes. Or worse, celery but no tomatoes, lettuce or peanut butter. I have to get creative to use up the celery and it usually ends up in some mismatched dish.

Last night we had guests over for cocktails. We had pita chips but when I checked the pantry, there were only four Triscuits left in the bottom of the box. I didn't want to see the guests fighting, so I only served the pita chips. The mismatch here was the herbed goat cheese on pita chips. Luckily we haven't run out of wine yet.

I always end up throwing something away, which is sad. This time, I think it's going to be lettuce. I tried to calculate the number of days left vs. the amount of lettuce needed per day, but we must have skipped a planned salad or two, I have three heads of romaine lettuce left.

If we have eggs left, I hard boil them and Terry eats them in-flight.

Sometimes I freeze things. When we get home after a long flight, there's a surprise waiting in the freezer. Last time, I'd made spaghetti and had leftovers which I froze. An easy four minutes in the microwave and we had dinner.

In Paris, it's a little harder to do this because we have an electrical ghost. For no reason, many times when we're not even home, the electricity in one of the two electrical boxes shuts off. Unfortunately, it's the box that the refrigerator is hooked up to, so I've been scared to freeze things in Paris and leave them. We've tried to get this problem fixed but we haven't been able to find the source of the problem.

So, in Paris, I am very careful to try to get rid of all the perishable food. We normally have so little food left that we eat out the night before we leave. Once, though, we ended up with a whole camembert. We couldn't bear to throw it out. We thought that we could enjoy part of it during the 11-1/2 hours of flight time so we took it with us in our carry on. Guess what? It was confiscated at CDG. Maybe it looks like explosives to the x-ray. Or, the guy at the machine was hungry. We'll never know.

In terms of clothes it's a different but also weird circumstance. If I decide to pack one part of an outfit but not it's mate, I have an un-wearable outfit. If I realize this error too late, the one piece is always at the bottom of the suitcase.

I like to take the opportunity of a departure to weed out clothes that I haven't worn in awhile. A few years ago, I thought that I might wear some of the things I don't wear in California in Paris. Suits from my previous working life for example. I packed them and took them to Paris only to realize that I didn't wear the outfit there either.

Unfortunately, I don't know how or where to recycle/give away clothes in Paris, so I now have a bag of clothes in the cave, waiting for me to find The Goodwill of Paris.