I don't get explosed to the same dramatics that you do (because I chase people out of the kitchen when I'm working!) but there is something deliciously perverse about being in someone else's home, peering into their fridge, their drawers, their cupboards, and seeing how they TRULY live.

People who arrange the pillows in their living room Just Right have ancient containers of food with a half-inch thick blanket of blue-green-black mold growing in their refrigerator.

Women who wouldn't be caught dead wearing last years' shoes have last years' freezer-burned Trader Joe's Enchiladas crowding their freezers.

I have opened cabinets to find bowls and glassware that were the final resting place of several species of insects and arachnids. Too gross!

I once cleaned out a couple's fridge so I could put their week's worth of food in there, and they had 6 (seriously, SIX) opened-but-not-rewrapped packages of cheap parmesan cheese, all left to dry out or grow moldy, in various sections of their refreigerator.

I dont have to read palms or analyze handwriting, I can tell you exactly what kind of person you are by the food rotting in your fridge.

And I can tell you exactly the type of person you are when I go looking for plastic wrap.

If you only have some cling wrap and a box of small Zip-Locs, it speaks volumes.

And if the same products are crammed into a drawer with measuring cups, pens, a couple boxes of jello, old batteries, a sweat band, and a pair of earrings - well. I know exactly who you are.

I found such a drawer on Saturday night.

not to the hostess maybe, but bad day or not, couldn't you just share a few gems with us?
please...

Gulp. Sounds like my drawer. 2nd over from the stove, measuring cups, elastic bands, rarely utensils like pizza cutter and cookie shapes, and yes, the cling wrap and freezer bags.
But I am poor and my kitchen is tiny, so that be my excuse.
i love your blog!

Note to self:

Clean and purge kitchen, re-stock cupboards, and hide the guest soaps when the Food Whore visits.

What you're really pointing out is that you and your staff were "the help" and, therefore, invisible. So your drunken hostess and her guests could speak their souls in front of you without you ever hearing. And that's the real pity: that those who hire don't realize that the people they hire to work for them are actual living, breathing and hearing human beings. That's what I find really insulting.

Try and remember, I am extremely anal about my kitchen organization. I am not militant (sort of), but like products belong together. Measuring cups go with baking utensils, ZipLoc bags go with foil, parchment, and plastic wrap. Sweatbands go in someone's duffle bag, etc.

I am really quite unpleasant to live with. :-)

And Barb, don't fuss. I will do it for you when I get there. LOL

I once catered a party for a woman who had her entire, enormous kitchen decked out in high end style, only the best appliances, etc. She purported to be a "fantastic cook" and maintained she and her "supper club" friends cooked for one another once a week... BUT her spices were all unopened, there were cases and cases of tiny franks and beans cans filling the cabinets and the entire two bottom shelves of the fridge, including the vegetable drawers, were filled with cans of Ensure. Vanilla flavored.

Uh oh. I have some pretty funky stuff in the back of the fridge. It sneaks back there and hides so I can't kick it out.