What does your fridge tell people?

I saw a little fun statistic the other day that caught my eye.

It said 82 percent of Americans form an opinion of people after viewing the contents of their refrigerator. It made me start thinking about what someone would think if they opened the door of mine.

First of all, our buying habits have totally changed since our sons moved out of the house. You will rarely find milk in our refrigerator. We don’t drink it, but our younger son used to drink the equivalent per week of a herd of dairy cows. When he came to visit recently, we bought a tiny carton. We’ve also bought a small container for my mother, who likes her milk with a little coffee.

A glance into our refrigerator, depending on the week, would probably give the impression that we’re healthy eaters, because we are, mostly. We always have apples — organic for me, poison for my husband. The same with grapes. I won’t eat them unless they’re organic, but he buys whatever. We’ll have farmers-market fruit; the latest were blackberries and blueberries, which were delicious. A look into our refrigerator a week ago would have shown a not-so-healthy blackberry cobbler my husband made, too.

We almost always have pineapple. My husband buys one every week and uses the handy-dandy pineapple corer my mother bought him. I bring some almost every day for lunch, along with leftovers from whatever he’s cooked.

Our refrigerator often has leftovers from my husband’s home-cooked meals, from stir fries to grilled pork tenderloin or turkey burgers. I know some people turn up their noses at turkey burgers, but I love them. He grills a few, and I take them for my lunch for two or three days in a row. We have an ongoing disagreement about how long leftovers are safe to eat.

Must. Have. Guacamole. Our refrigerator, more often than not, has guacamole my husband has made. He knows I love it, and I’ve been known to eat it as an appetizer before a meal, no matter if we’re having spaghetti or chicken curry.

Salsa is another staple that’s in our refrigerator most of the time. I can’t get enough of it.

We always have pickles. I won’t touch them, but my husband likes them on hamburgers and, common in his family but weird to many of us, on peanut-butter sandwiches.

We are some cheese-eating people in my family. Our sons liked it, and I take string cheese to work every day for a snack.

Lately, I’m partial to pepper jack.

Eggs. If someone opens our refrigerator and there are no eggs, I’m not happy. I eat one every day, scrambled, on a muffin. With cheese.

We buy eggs through our online farmers market, and getting them from your favorite farmer is like buying concert tickets — you better be ready when the market opens.

There is almost always a big pitcher of decaffeinated iced tea, unsweetened for my husband. I know this is unSouthern, and someone might think Yankees live in our house if they saw this, but I drink it all day. I add a little sweetener.

Sometimes our refrigerator looks kind of bare and pitiful because we don’t have a lot of prepackaged food.

I guess this little survey didn’t mention freezers — ours always has ice cream of some kind — and right now, some leftover deer meat our son gave us that my husband needs to cook.

I told my husband about this little statistic, and he wondered who looks in people’s refrigerators.

“I do judge people by what’s in their grocery cart,” he said.

Doesn’t everyone?

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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