stinky

Literally.

I'm on a never-ending quest for dinner ideas that are fast, easy, and healthy. (This seems like the most OBVIOUS statement ever. Is there anyone in the world that is NOT looking for those things? Someone who's anti-fast, easy, and healthy? But anyway.) On the evenings we go to the gym, we run a tight schedule-- get home from work, walk Lola, change, go to gym, come home, and it's easily 7:00 if not later. Me? I like to eat dinner about 5:30...so you can see how fitting the gym into my life has caused me to make some lifestyle sacrifices/changes. So by the time we get home, if there is not food in my extremely immediate future, well...I'm not sure what would happen, but it wouldn't be pretty. It takes everything I have to not stop at one of the 3,284 fast food restaurants that are in the same shopping center as the gym! So I'm always keeping my eyes out and ears open for food that I can either throw in the crockpot before we drive to the gym, or just anything that can go from freezer/fridge to table in 30 minutes or less.

A few weeks ago, while shopping at Publix (which is a pleasure) and picking out some turkey kielbasa (love), I happened to think about sauerkraut. Growing up, kielbasa and sauerkraut was a frequent dinner (with some cornbread on the side? oh YUM!) at my house. The nice thing about both kielbasa and sauerkraut is that they're both basically already cooked-- they just need to be heated...so you could do it in a pan/pot on the stove, or microwave (I guess? Never have) or like my mom did, in the crockpot. Sauerkraut is nothing but cabbage & vinegar and turkey kielbasa is extremely healthy, so the combination of these two also meets my criteria for being a somewhat nutritious dinner. After I got it in my head that I would purchase these things for a dinner that week, I noticed that they actually had sauerkraut right there in the refrigerator section next to the kielbasa-- apparently my mom didn't invent this combination of food! It was in clear bags...kind of like the bags you buy pre-washed salad in or something. My mom always bought sauerkraut in cans from the vegetable row, but this seemed to be about the same price, so in my head I thought maybe it would be fresher than the canned stuff-- so this is what I got.

Fast forward a few days. We haven't eaten our kielbasa/sauerkraut dinner just yet. One afternoon I notice that the fridge smells a little funny when I close it. I immediately assign blame to some milk that is like one day past its due date and toss the milk. The next day the odor is stronger. Suddenly it hits me-- the sauerkraut. Of COURSE. Yuck. No wonder my mom bought it in cans! Mind you-- I haven't OPENED the bag of kraut-- it's exactly the way I bought it. Evidently the cabbage and vinegar odor is stronger than the plastic bag. SKETCH. So we eat it that night (and it's delicious just the way I remember it).

The problem? Um, that was like 2 weeks ago. My fridge? Still smells like stank sauerkraut. As good as that stuff tastes, the smell leaves quite a bit to be desired. It really smells like curdled milk...and sweaty feet. All the things I like my fridge to smell like, really.

The thing is, what can I do about it? It's not like there was some spill or something that I can wipe up. My fridge is only like 8 months old and I've kept it pretty clean. I do already have the baking soda thingy in there...maybe I need to get a new box of baking soda? Is there a limit to how much stankiness baking soda can absorb?

Incidentally, as much as the stench of sauerkraut has been bothering me lately, I've never really considered it a "weird" food. I guess I realize that maybe not all people eat it? I mean, it's not really an integral part of any (American) dishes we normally eat, so I wouldn't expect people to like...keep it on hand or anything. But I wouldn't really think it's something people abhor or anything. But last week on Amazing Race, it was a food challenge! As in, eat this plate of sauerkraut before the time runs out. I mean, usually the food challenges involve like...fish heads. Fried scorpions. Pickled monkey feet. Nasty stuff, you know? Is sauerkraut really in the same category as all that?

Discuss amongst yourselves.