12 Things That Are Always In My Refrigerator

In my fridge

Our favorite supermarket stopped carrying Philadelphia Fat Free Cream Cheese a couple weeks ago. It’s such a staple in our fridge that we looked at a different store for it this past week, to no avail — Aaron had to buy that store’s brand of fat-free cream cheese, instead.

It got me to thinking about the things we always keep in our fridge. I think this probably went around as some sort of meme years ago, but now I present to you, just for shits and giggles and in no particular order, twelve things we always have in our fridge (at least, right after grocery shopping). 

  1. Fat Free Cream Cheese. The item that started this whole train of thought. We used to hate it, but now we like the fat-free version of cream cheese just fine. We put it on bagel thins with salmon for sandwiches and in cheese sauces for pasta dishes.
  2. Aunt Millie’s 35 Calorie Bread. It’s our favorite brand of low-calorie bread. We always have a loaf in the fridge for sandwiches or toast, and usually we keep at least one loaf in reserve in the deep freeze.
  3. 1% Milk.There was a time in our weight loss journey that we did drink nonfat (skim) milk — as I recall, when our son was one year old and allowed to drink whole milk instead of formula, we actually bought both nonfat and whole milk, just because we couldn’t bring ourselves to drink the whole milk. Nowadays, the grown-ups and the kiddo both drink the same milk (although the grown-ups don’t drink much milk, honestly).
  4. Unsweetened Cashew Milk. No, we don’t drink it straight up. Eww! I use it in my coffee and for cooking and baking. I substitute a portion of the milk in my muffin recipes for cashew milk, and it lowers the calories (and Weight Watchers SmartPoints) just a smidge without sacrificing flavor or texture.
  5. Miracle Whip Light. Needed for tuna salad, sandwiches, and various other concoctions.
  6. Brita water pitcher. Our house was built in 1963, and the pipes lend this not-so-awesome flavor to the tap water. At least, I assume that’s the problem, since we had city water at our last house without this particular flavor.
  7. Hidden Valley Fat Free Ranch. We don’t eat many salads at home lately, but you never know when you’ll need a dip for some veggies or a quesadilla in our house.
  8. Caffeine Free Diet Coke. We don’t drink it all the time — we’re more water and coffee drinkers — but we do like the option of having a Diet Coke once in a while. Plus, it’s a good mixer for the Jameson’s we’ve got sitting on top of the fridge. Oh, and pop is a grown-up drink in our house, like coffee.
  9. Produce. Fruits and vegetables. Alton Brown would cringe at some of the foods we keep in here: grapes, onions, strawberries, tomatoes, celery, cored pineapple.
  10. Cheese. Various full-fat and reduced-fat varieties: cheese cubes, string cheese, shredded mozzarella, shredded cheddar, a round of apple-smoked Gouda.
  11. Yogurt. Usually Dannon Light & Fit Greek Yogurt, and usually banana cream, peach, and maybe some more desserty flavors or seasonal flavors (like pumpkin).
  12. Sugar Free Jell-O and Jell-O Pudding Snacks. Great to put in lunches for a little treat — for grown-ups and kiddo alike.

There are other things you’d find in our fridge on the regular, like smoked salmon or bell peppers or various condiments or my son’s apple juice, but these are the things that we’d probably go to another store to find if our supermarket of choice stopped carrying them.

I guess I hadn’t realized how… diety our refrigerator must seem. Our fridge didn’t look anything like this some 15 years ago — swap out the Caffeine Free Diet Coke for a case of regular Mountain Dew, for one thing.

But that’s a tangent for another day.

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