Thanksgiving and the Case of the Stinky Fridge

Now more than a week after Thanksgiving, it's dawned on me that I glossed over the holiday completely. I don't think I even wished you all a Happy Thanksgiving. Forgive the oversight. It's been a whirlwind around here lately, and honestly Thanksgiving seems like a few months, not days, ago.

This year we hosted Thanksgiving at our house along with Lisa and had another family over to celebrate with us. The menu included all the usuals plus a couple new ones, turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, cornbread stuffing (which I'm still raving about and have to make for Christmas), squash casserole, buttermilk biscuits, creamed corn, and asparagus and tomato salad. For dessert we had apple pie, pumpkin ice cream pie, and Nigella's sinful chocolate mousse cake. Because we had three capable foodies attending to the feast, the meal was stress-free and truly delicious.

But the story that steals the day for Thanksgiving was the case of the stinky fridge. I went grocery shopping Monday night for the big Thanksgiving meal, and as I was putting food away I noticed a slightly unpleasant odor in the refrigerator. By the next morning the smell had gotten worse. I began to think maybe it was the cauliflower and cheese soup left over in the fridge, after all, cauliflower can have a strong smell. I wasn't convinced that was it, but down the drain the last of the soup went and in the fridge went a box of baking soda. Later in the day after Lisa had arrived, the smell still wasn't gone and we began methodically checking every item (or so we thought), particularly dairy to see if something had surreptitiously gone bad. End of day Wednesday we were certain we had found it, 2 bad onions at the bottom of the vegetable drawer. We threw them out, thoroughly washed the bin, and felt satisfied that the case was solved. Not so fast. Thursday morning at breakfast I opened the fridge and the smell was just as strong as ever. We were mystified and with a full day of cooking ahead we decided to just go with it. Well, wouldn't you know that as I got the cheeses out for appetizers before dinner, I found the offending item, an as of yet unopened package of brie, which when opened made me want to die. Thank goodness we found the culprit and didn't get food poisoning from eating the French cheese. That would have been another Thanksgiving story which we probably would've blamed on the poor turkey.