Comments on: The Anti-Fridge

By: Mira

Mira — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 15:22:04 +0000

I grew up in an era when houses were still built with a proper ventilated pantry in the kitchen and a couple of big bins for the potatoes (bought once a year directly from the farmer) in the cellar. My family also had a traditional building for the cured hams (also bought once a year directly from the farmer) in the yard. My current home is made in such a way that I can’t store anything at all the traditional way – there is not even any corner where I can put in a small naturally ventilated pantry without redesigning the whole house…

- Mira

By: Peggy

Peggy — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 07:50:05 +0000

My grandmother was born in 1900 and lived in a small town in Kansas. There were ice boxes (when ice was available), cellars, home grown foods which were preserved by canning, smoking (meats), salt (sauerkraut), sugar (preserves, jam), pickling (eggs, meats, vegetables), dehydrating (most herbs, fruits and vegetables) and preserving root crops in sand, sawdust, and more. She added a refrigerator in her modern new home in Oregon, complete with a small space for ice cubes, which would not keep ice cream overnight. Water freezes at a lower temperature than products with sugar or salt, each a preservative. Her neighborhood had a bakery, butcher shop, post office, hair dresser… all within walking distance. She shopped daily for things near her, or weekly as needed. None of us ever got sick from food eaten at Grandma’s house! Back to old timey ways? Some of my siblings still practice those traditions, because it is practical and delicious.

“Refrigerate after opening”? Really, now. Ketchup, honey, mustard, syrup, pickles, jams, anything high in sugar, vinegar, salt will keep without refrigeration longer than you think. Eggs? Butter? Cheese? Not sold in New Zealand or Australia in coolers. Simply buy only what you will use in a reasonable time.

In Alaska, we have a short growing season, but lots of daylight so vegetables & some fruits thrive. Chickens, laying hens, geese, pigs, beef, are all possible year ’round with a little extra effort. Friends have a root cellar in which they keep root crops all winter long (and it can -60 degrees F in the deep of winter).

I’m excited about the designs which appear to be more art than for practical use. I am going to find a local craftsman to take the principle and make me some for my kitchen!!

By: Alek Felstiner

Alek Felstiner — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 07:24:00 +0000

These are stylish and clever. My wife’s did a bunch of work along the same lines for her thesis at California College of the Arts.

http://bit.ly/bfLmk2

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:38:54 +0000

Fantastic post (and I really dig your blog as a whole)! Do you know the report “Cooking Up a Storm: Food, greenhouse gas emissions, and our changing climate,” by Tara Garnett of the Food Climate Research Network? (Available here: http://www.fcrn.org.uk/fcrnPublications/index.php?id=6) She includes a really thorough and well-written exploration of how the design of houses has already contributed to the ubiquity of the refrigerator (specifically, in the UK, the decline of a “larder” room separate from the kitchen, which was generally a few degrees cooler). And how marketing by Birdseye and other food companies affected what grocers display in cold storage and in turn what we put in our home refrigerators. Maybe some of this is in Fresh, too, but Garnett’s work is really worth a look.

By: Georgia

Georgia — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:33:17 +0000

I prefer to store my veg and fruits on the counter; they taste better at room temperature!

Jihyun Ryou is very clever – thanks for sharing.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:15:40 +0000

Check out my friend Jesse’s short doc, Icebox Blues:

Major crises don’t usually come from broken appliances, but when my mom’s fridge died, a seemingly small event lead us to some big questions about energy consumption. http://www.greenermedia.com/icebox.html

By: Alexis Madrigal

Alexis Madrigal — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:09:53 +0000

When I lived in the Lavapies neighborhood of Madrid, it occurred to me for the first time that I had no idea how to tell what “good” food looked like. I don’t mean taste, even, I just mean like, “Won’t make you throw up.” I grew up in the exurbs where the supermarkets are the largest buildings around.

The Spanish meat looked so different from its American cousin that I was flummoxed about what to buy and eat. I’d hold up the packages to my nose and… it just smelled weird. And bad. Not that you needed the extra proximity to your volatile organic compound sensor.

You walked in the door and it was just — BAM — trillions of bacteria interacting with meat, happily feasting on it and releasing the smell of life remaking itself with the remains of life. It was usually tolerable but remarkably unpleasant.

When I got back to Seattle, I would walk into the QFC on 45th in tony Wallingford and just breathe deeeeeeep. Ahhhh. Now that’s how food is supposed to smell! Like nothing! Every cut of meat looked perfect and marbled. Nothing smelled. You could buy a cake with a photograph printed on it in delicious sugarstuff. America, you will never be worthy of your Trotskyites!

One day, later at night because I used to keep those hours, I walked into the QFC and almost fell to the floor gagging. The entire place didn’t smell like meat that was a little ripe, it smelled like the final scraps of rotting zebra flesh that a runt hyena was attempting to pry from the worms. And the weirdest thing was: all these people were in there shopping, hardly even rubbing their noses or nudging their neighbors in snow-day sympathy. It was as if this smell was so unfamiliar and so bad that no one could smell it. They just couldn’t believe that the smell could possibly be related to the polished cracked-cement floors.

Fighting my way through the staggering odor, practically leaning on its solidity and potency, I asked a kindly checker, “WTF?” Apparently, it was something [scan] to do [scan] with [scan scan] the grease traps [scan].

This is some kind of tangled metaphor for the American food system. Brutally efficient, free from odors, shiny … until it loses its goddamn mind and marauds through the streets like a rebellious robot. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it. “Food is made of formerly living things!” it cries, shoveling cellophane packaging into its maw.

But you just wait, sweep up the shards, and know that a refrigerated Snickers bar awaits you if you keep calm and ignore the smell.

By: karl

karl — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:57:39 +0000

“But living without a refrigerator seems slightly insane, if not completely impossible.”

Entirely possible in certain contexts. I have been living in Tokyo, Japan for 3 years without having a fridge. And I didn’t regret it. It almost started as an experiment when I moved from Canada to Japan and that I had to throw, sell or give a lot of stuff, because the space in Japan is much smaller.

Arriving in Japan, I created a rule for myself: « buy only what you really need, when you need it. » The fridge never reached that level. But it was Tokyo.

1. At 30s from my place, there was a combini (open 24/7), like seven-eleven in USA, but it was only the closest one. There were around 10 in a 5 minutes walk around my place.

2. The size of packages and portions of food is small! That changes also a lot of things. You can buy only what you will consume. No huge pack of milk. Small yoghurt sold individually, etc.

3. There were three small supermarkets with fresh products 2 minutes walking around my place.

4. If you feel not in the mood for cooking, shopping, there are plenty of places opened very late at night (till 3am) for dinner. Some opened 24/7.

All of these combined made my life much simpler, healthier and eating fresh products.

By: Nicola

Nicola — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:16:05 +0000

I think you’d be better off using a root cellar or basement too – but for people who live in flats or houses without such a thing, the moistened sand storage units could provide a pretty nifty alternative. To me, they seem quite practical (as well as aesthetically pleasing), although, of course, without having used them it’s hard to tell.
I also agree with you on the continued difference between the U.S. and Europe on refrigeration: I grew up in the UK and now live in New York, and I am always amazed at the things Americans chose to store in the fridge (jam! granola! lemons! mangoes! tea bags! … why?). Mind you, nail varnish does last longer if you store it in the fridge…

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:58:56 +0000

Well those designs are meant to be art, not practical, right? I’d think you’d be better off storing root crops in a cool, dark basement. It’s a very intersting point though. It’s still common in Europe not to refrigerate food like eggs and butter that we always keep chilled in the US – which reflects a real loss in understanding our food.