What's in My Fridge: When Your Lifestyle Has to Fit Your Refrigerator

You know I split my time between Amsterdam and Sicily, right? Well, that means I've had to adjust my eating habits.

Why, you might ask, does your eating pattern have anything to do with splitting your time between two places?

Simple: the fridge! It has to be empty before I leave. Because when I leave, I shut off the electricity completely. And I always try as hard as I can to avoid throwing food away.

In both places, Amsterdam and Sicily, I only have a small mini-fridge with one of those little freezer compartments on top. I don't see why I'd need a bigger one. I live alone, so I don't need to stock much food, and a little model like that saves a ton of space in the kitchen. You can easily slide it under a counter, like I did in Sicily, or put a gas stove on top of it, like I did in Amsterdam.

I'll admit that people who sometimes stay with me for longer stretches, like my daughter and Harry back in the day, really can't stand my little fridges. They come with some real downsides. First, you have to squat down to actually see what's in there. Unlike a bigger fridge (which is usually only bigger because there's a same-sized freezer underneath) where you can just stand in front of it while you open the door. And second, my little fridges tend to be, frankly, kind of awkwardly packed. And that's precisely because they have to be emptied out every single time! Still with me? 🤪

Because sure, every time I leave I leave behind an empty fridge, but that logically means I also always arrive to an empty fridge. Where most people can just top off supplies that are running low, I always have to start from zero. And that often means the fridge gets stuffed full right away.

That last part might sound contradictory, but let me explain.

As I've said here before, I live on a tight budget. So it's a lot more cost-effective for me to buy a 5 kg bag of potatoes for 2 euros than to keep buying a kilo for a euro fifty each time. That's in Amsterdam, though — because believe it or not, groceries in Sicily are generally quite a bit pricier overall. At least at the supermarket. But in Sicily, I can't just walk into the produce shop and buy one tomato, or three potatoes. They simply don't sell things that way — they just give it to you. So out of basic decency, I end up buying a kilo of everything. Same at the butcher's. And before you know it, your fridge, freezer included, is packed to the brim.

By the way, quick tangent. Speaking of the supermarket — I've been noticing more and more tourists from Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavian countries, and the UK at my usual Lidl. It's striking how differently they shop compared to the locals. The tourists really do — like I myself tend to do whenever possible — buy one tomato, one carrot, just a small amount of everything. And they always pay with their phone or debit card. The locals load up their carts completely and mostly pay in cash. I mean... you hear these statistics about poverty in Sicily, and I don't doubt them, but when I see people casually paying 200 euros in cash at the register, I have to gently conclude that maybe those numbers don't apply to everyone.

Anyway, back to my eating pattern, which has, out of necessity, adapted to my back-and-forth travels. It's mostly a one-track kind of eating. What I eat isn't so much determined by what I feel like, but by what's still left in the fridge and how many days I have left before I leave. Because those big quantities I'm forced to buy also all need to get eaten. And what I no longer do is force myself to eat just to finish it off. That's really not good for my waistline, I've unfortunately had to learn!

No — every time I walk through the supermarket and spot something tasty I'm tempted to grab, I pretty much automatically tell myself: don't buy it, you won't finish it!

So if, like right now, I've already bought a kilo of sausages and half a chicken at the butcher's, and then I see the cod is on sale at the supermarket, I have to tell myself: One, there's no room left in the fridge, and two, there's no way you're going to eat it all before you leave again. In practice, that means: once you've committed to sausages, no fish!

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there's always way more room in the fridge than there is room in your stomach

It really took me a long time to get good at estimating how much food actually fits in the fridge, and whether I'll even manage to eat it all before I leave again. And I can tell you: there's always way more room in the fridge than there is room in your stomach. So practically speaking, what it comes down to is: at the start of each stay (in Amsterdam or in Sicily), I stuff the fridge full and slowly eat my way through it, occasionally topping up the essentials I go through daily, like yogurt, milk, and eggs.

So now you know what the fridge looks like for someone who splits her time between two places. 😉
How does yours look?

Photos: (top) Squared.one and Nicolas J. Barbier