Managing Food Expectations: Lesson from My Fridge

So, I cleaned out my fridge, and guess what I found? A floppy carrot, a half-cut onion, and a reality check on my food ideals.

Oct 23, 2023

Halo! Happy Monday everyone!

Today’s newsletter has been sitting in my draft for quite a bit now. I was afraid that this essay was going to be too mundane especially when my latest piece on veggie consumption in Indonesia was packed with analyses, charts, and stats. But after reading it again, I actually like how mundane it is.

Here’s what I’m going to tell you:

🤦‍♂️ The occasional sad and depressing state of my fridge.

🧠 A glimpse of how my brain works when it comes to making food out of dying and quirky produces (Spoiler: not so good).

🗯 A reality slap to accept that not all of my food is going to be tasty or healthy - and that’s OK.

Things that are somehow always in my fridge and pantry. (Illustration by yours truly)

Every once in a while, I like to do a proper, deep fridge cleanout. There is no fixed schedule for me to do this ritual nor that I use my intuition to know when’s the time - because usually, it’s obvious. I’ll know it when my fridge is half empty and filled with random mixes of veggies and fruits. Like a single piece of floppy carrot, a container filled with half-cut onion, or a bunch of coriander leaves that some started to turn yellow. It’s a sight that is both colourful and sad at the same time.

It’s clear that one of the reasons for me to clean my fridge is to get rid of anything that is almost expired or no longer needed. I swear, I could be a millionaire if I got a dollar every time I didn’t finish a loaf of bread before it turned mouldy. Because first, we don’t eat that much bread in Indonesia and second, a dollar is roughly 15,000 Indonesian rupiah. Most of us are pretty much a millionaire here.

But more than that, working with a variety of quirky veggies and sometimes leftovers, often time means pushing my creativity to a route I never think of.

As I mentioned before, one time I had a bunch of wilted, sad-looking coriander leaves that had been sitting for almost a week. They’re dry, they’re turning yellow, and they’re screaming for me to throw them away. It’s even sadder to know that I have only used them once during the time I was filming a smashed cucumber salad recipe. The recipe only calls for a handful of them for the dressing, so I pretty much still have 90% of them just chilling in my fridge next to the other dying veggies.

With that many coriander leaves left, it would be tricky to finish it by turning it into an Indonesian dish as we don’t typically use coriander leaves as our main ingredients. We would still use them, but mainly as garnishes on top of our stew or steamed fish.

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After a quick brainstorm, I decided to go the Indian route and turn them into kothimeera rice.

I did not know it was called kothimeera rice initially. I only knew that I wanted to use as many coriander leaves as possible in one go, and that meant turning them into a paste.

I started by chopping up my coriander leaves and then diced my garlic and chilli. They are then sauteed with a little bit of olive oil and salt, then blended into a smooth paste afterwards. On top of making it more shelf-stable and giving me another two weeks’ pass of keeping it in your fridge, this paste is very versatile. You can turn them into a soup, a veggie stir fry, or since we are still in the spirit of cleaning a fridge, you can definitely follow my classic Indonesian move which is to make fried rice out of everything.

I pulled out my wok, heated it up with a generous amount of vegetable oil, and scooped a few spoons of the paste into it. Together with some other veggies and a plate full of day-old rice, I was confident that this was going to be one of those great inventions that came out of a desperate time.

I was wrong. It was the most confusing-tasting fried rice I’ve ever made.

It’s edible, but it was too herby for it to be an Indonesian fried rice, yet also not spicy enough for it to be an Indian / Thai fried rice. It’s giving: identity crisis.

So just like any other person in the world, I googled to find a fried rice recipe that has coriander leaves in it and stumbled upon a kothimeera rice recipe. Yes, it was one of those very specific Google search queries.

The recipe calls for a bunch of coriander leaves and garlic which I got correct the first time, but I was missing a lot of ingredients, and spices like onion, cinnamon, and cumin seeds. As soon as I realized that I didn’t have these spices available in my fridge and pantry, I quickly opened my online grocery app and added all of those missing ingredients plus a pack of plant-based chicken satay for extra protein. Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on in my mind.

I added those missing ingredients to my already-cold fried rice and heated it back again on my wok. Once cooked, the rice had a beautiful vibrant green hue to it, a savoury and sweet smell of caramelized onions, and a glistening look as the oil coated each piece of the rice. While they were still steaming, I poured them onto my bowl-looking plate - you know, those plates that look like bowls but it’s not deep enough to be a bowl.

I remember I was very excited to try this new dish for the first time, and as I scooped my first spoon of rice, I sighed, out of relief that I actually made a great meal out of nothing.

Except that, it wasn’t out of nothing.

As soon as I cleaned my kitchen bench, I realized that now I had extra onions, satays, and a full pack of cinnamon and cumin seeds that would sit on my fridge and pantry for who knows how long. I am now, once again, trapped in an endless cycle of extra food.

Left: The said kothimeera rice plus my chicken satay… off the skewers. | Right: My current obsession with watching One Piece while eating dinner.

This is crazy. A fridge cleanout was supposed to help me clean the fridge and bring some food to the table, not add another back to the fridge.

I was annoyed, but also giggling at the same time. “What was I thinking?” I said to myself as I put my extra onions and satays into the fridge. I was so carried away by the desire to have an authentic and nutritionally balanced meal that it made me forget that all I needed for now was a clean fridge.

It’s funny how a fridge cleanout, one that was initially supposed to help me prevent food from being wasted, in fact, turned me into Gordon Ramsay in a Masterchef audition. As I sit on my sofa, scooping spoons of fried rice to my mouth and zoning out while One Piece is playing in the background, I told to myself: “Next time, let’s be OK with eating a half-seasoned fried rice".

Of course, having authentic and nutritionally balanced meals are nice - but having this expectation for all of my meal is unrealistic. This silly expectation can stem from anywhere - from the content that you see on social media even to your closest friends.

It’s natural for us to be influenced by the things that we are exposed to. For example, my family doesn’t really eat red meat, thus making me also not have the biggest appetite for it. But for this case, I hate to admit that it’s definitely coming from the #healthtok videos that flooded my For You Page (FYP) every time I opened TikTok.

Realizing this was the culprit was a hard process for me as social media influences us in a subtle way. The FYP in TikTok is designed to show you the right content at the right time. One day, I would be getting a recommendation for a new salad bar that just opened in my area, and the next day, I’d be getting a video saying that fried food would ruin my diet entirely. By itself, this one video would not probably change us, but together and repeatedly, these videos will eventually shape a new mindset if we are not critical enough about what we consume.

The idea of a healthy lifestyle is nice, but not all forms of it are attainable or at least enjoyable for you.

It’s like how a lot of Indonesians got disappointed when they realized that Tiffany’s Plate was not as good as they thought. Let’s not force-feed ourselves to swallow a cottage cheese-and-mustard dip when what we enjoy is a small bowl of sambal terasi to dip our veggies. Because the idea of a single diet that works for everyone is a fantasy.

On top of that, I really believe when it comes to our eating habits, or any other habits in general, striving for perfection will only result in a feeling of stress and guilt. We should cut ourselves some slack by allowing occasional imbalances and cheat meals as long as we compensate them with other healthier choices throughout the day. For example, if I already had my instant noodles for breakfast, then I’ll maybe add a fruit protein smoothie for my afternoon snack. Cheat meals are perfectly fine as long as it doesn’t turn into cheat days, weeks, or months.

Have you experienced something similar to this? Let me know in the comment below!