Kitchen/Fridge Ninja

Overview

The job of the fridge ninja is to go through the upstairs fridges each week and throw out anything that is "no longer safe or tasty to consume." This includes the Kitten fridge and the CGE fridge, but none of the basement fridges.

One nice thing about the job is that there is no particular time window that it must be completed in, as long as you spend two hours on it each week. Thus, you can do one two-hour purge of the fridges or break it up throughout the week as you see fit or as the need arises (ie, the fridge is getting full of leftovers or something seems to be going bad).

Should I chuck this?

Given that people have different tolerances of what is "too old to eat," and none of us want to waste food, it can sometimes be difficult to decide whether to throw something out. Here are some considerations:

• Do I know what this is, when it's from, and whether I can eat it? > Basically everything except fresh produce should be labelled with a date, name of the food item, and allergens/dietary restrictions. Anything not labelled properly is a good candidate for tossing.
• Does it look/smell ok? > Obviously, if not, it's gotta go.
• How long has it been here? > For leftovers, a week is usually a good rule of thumb, but some items will be more or less.
• Will people actually eat this? > Sometimes, even if something is still perfectly safe to eat, it is just unlikely to get eaten. If an item looks unappetizing or has been in the fridge for a while and no one is eating it, probably no one is going to miss it if you throw it out.
• Is the fridge full of leftovers? > If so, it's best to err on the side of throwing things out to free up space and because the older food is less likely to get eaten. If not, you can err on the side of keeping things.

Fridge ninja reports

Documenting what you find in the fridges and sending to mealplanners (or at least big cooks and stewards) can help them know what to make to use ingredients before they go bad and what/how much to make to generate leftovers that will get eaten. You don't need to write up a comprehensive list of every single thing in the fridges each week (unless you want to), as things like condiments don't change much. Some things that are helpful to include are:

• Leftovers that could be eaten as-is
• Leftover ingredients like chopped herbs or sauces
• Fresh produce
• Specialty items (often in CGE fridge) likely to spoil quickly
• Things you composted

Tips and other info

• For disposing of liquidy things, lining the little compost bins with compostable bags can make things less gross.
• For large leftovers, you can always cut out the middleman and just dump it into the bin directly.
• Always wash and reuse tupperware, including late tupps!
• You do not have to wash and reuse ziploc bags.
• If you run any full sterilizer trays before you start they'll be done and ready to be emptied by the time you're generating dishes.
• While not an expected part of the job, if you have extra time you can go through the produce rack in the CGE. It usually doesn't take that long and can help fight the fruit flies.