Refrigerator Referees

 Do you know how many bottles of cocktail sauce are in the refrigerator?

How many times have you been hit with a question like this? And no, it's not a rhetorical question. You are truly expected to answer it. Gosh, I've always hated pop quizzes.

I was asked this not once, but two evenings in a row recently. Of course I didn't know the answer. Why? Because I'm not a counter of things.

In my defense, we had two semi- and not so recent dinners that revolved around the seafood theme. One at the house and one at the river. Oh my, I am truly hoping there aren't any more bottles in the fridge down there.

The kids (who are all grown but will be referred to as kids forever) all love seafood. So we had a big lobster, crab leg and shrimp dinner and then we had a shrimp boil when we celebrated Memorial Day. In my defense, I have had a bit of brain fog for the last couple of years so I couldn't remember if we did have any or not. Plus, if we didn't and I put one in the fridge, there's supposed to be one in pantry. Whoever opens the last bottle from the refrigerator is supposed to write it on the grocery list. So you see where I'm going with this.

None of our kids were raised to "dine like the rich," like my Mother says but they all do like their seafood. There was a time when Andrew wouldn't touch it. Back when Dale could break the bank eating shrimp; Andrew's favorite seafood was hushpuppies. No, I am not joking. All of you out there reading this and judging me, just go right on. I used to order hushpuppies from the local fish place while Dale was tearing off shrimp tails faster than you could say, "whoa son!" Back then, I had kids who wouldn't eat any form of a potato, fried or mashed; one liked chicken nuggets and the other would only eat a hamburger with no pickles or any condiments. I can not count the nights when I would say, "one of these days you boys are going to realize you grew up in a house with a Mom who cooked good food." Poor Andrew, I had to lie to him that a roasted chicken was really a baby turkey, which he liked, to get him to eat chicken. I never gave up cooking good meals but I didn't let them eat junk all the time...Only on soccer nights and when their friends spent the night in droves. And on friend nights, it was surprising how many of their friends would gladly devour whatever I had cooked up.

One night Andrew and I stopped at Zaxby's after a late game. We ordered some type of chicken club sandwich and lo and behold that boy ate a pickle. The first time I had witnessed this in over 17 years. He must have noticed the look on my face. In his calm, cool way of talking, he just grinned and said, "oh yea, I like pickles now." Not only that, he was willingly eating chicken and french fries. Shocking indeed.

Now they are both grown and are extremely health conscious eaters; gladly covering all the food groups.

Sorry to ramble on. Back to the original point I was trying to make. In Andy's defense; when we were dating, I did tell him when my last name was the same as his, he could be the boss of the fridge. I was notorious for putting everything under the sun in the fridge and he believed the top shelf was to be reserved for the beer and there should be as little as could be in the rest of it. It should almost look like we were starving people is what I equated it to. Like maybe one night's left overs would be it. OK. You are talking to the daughter of the Queen Mother who has the largest refrigerator on the face of the Earth and couldn't pack one more thing in there if your life depended on it. I get it honest.

For the most part, we sort of adhere to his preference, but since I've been home, it's out of control. I will admit. I have been cooking some things in bulk, but we'll take care of that this weekend and we should be back to ground zero.

Just so you know, the answer to today's pop quiz is five! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! (Picture the Count from Sesame Street) Five bottles of cocktail sauce! Technically we had two Zesty and three original, but who's counting?