Sunday night’s dinner was supposed to be Moules-Frites (mussels and french fries).  So at around 4 pm I start my prep work and slice up about 1/2 cup of shallots and 4 garlic cloves…

Then my little Beach Rose falls headfirst down the stairs.  All of them.  After starting from her toes and asking if they hurt and going all the way up her pudgy little body, we determine that, thank God, she’s ok.

As my husband is consoling her and bringing her into the kitchen to have a jelly bean to “make her feel better”, someone starts pounding on the front door yelling for us to “Quick! Open the door!”  Turns out that the wind has knocked down a tree on our road.  The tree fell on a power line and snapped it in 2 and the very live, dancing ends of the power line are in our side yard lighting it on fire!

Needless to say, we were out of power for 5 hours and the Moules-Frites were postponed till the next day.

Oh. My. Goodness.  The smell in the fridge the next day was breath-stopping.

I was sure that the mussels had gone bad and that rotten seafood was the culprit for the stench.  Once I’d decided that I would be able to open the fridge door without losing my breakfast, I took a whiff of the bag of mussels and… they smelled like the sea, beautiful.

My HUGE mistake was slicing those shallots and garlic and storing them as you see above, in my refrigerator.  Does that look like a tight seal to you?  Nooooooooo……..

Every food item that went into my dinner on Monday night was fresh and the meal was delicious.   But I’ll tell you what… it was really difficult for me to get past my head and my nose that kept telling me that some smell was assaulting my senses.  Thank goodness nobody else was affected and my dinner party was thrilled with April in Paris!

It’s now been 3 days since the offensive bowl left my fridge and things are just getting back to normal, smell-wise.  I did have to toss a few other loosely wrapped items in the fridge that very quickly absorbed the garlic-shallot flavor (read: onion-flavored grapes, strawberries, & cinnamon-raisin bread).

A couple of helpful hints, so that you can learn from my mistake…

1. Keep one of these odor-absorbing items in your fridge at all times:

• open box of baking soda
• cup of white vinegar
• cup of fresh coffee grounds
• cup of oats

and

2.  Wrap your stinky chopped shallots, halved onions, sliced garlic, etc 2-3 times, tightly, with Saran wrap and then enclose in a ziploc freezer bag.  Or better yet, put them in an airtight plastic or glass container in the fridge.

Aren’t you grateful for all of my foolish mistakes, so that I can tell you all about how to avoid being such a dufus like me?!