Rotten potatoes.

When I returned from my recent conference/vacation, my cottage smelled like rotten potatoes.

As it turns out, I had an eight-pound untouched bag up in the cupboard above my fridge where I keep my wine and whiskey, and it had gone bad, like where several or more had rotted, and there was this thick molasses-like slime accumulating at the bottom from where they'd molded and leaked out from in between the potato-bag's plastic net-meshing and started to change into something else, as the slime gradually settled and dehydrated and left this thick caking of mold on the fake wood, staining it.

Usually I'd be motivated to pick out the good ones, but there were small gnats flying around from where they'd started breeding, so no, I just picked it up and ran it outside and ran and hurled it into a dumpster in the back alley.

THONK, it rang metallically, as the eight pounds of rotting potatoes hit the dumpster-side.

I then washed the bottom of the cupboard with rubbing alcohol and then Dawn dish-soap in turn, and I lit a scented candle in there to try to burn away the rotten potato smell.

(I don't do candles, but I had been given one as a gift as part of a small going-away present giftbag from my one [very short-term] [Chinese-American] ex-coworker at the one [Thai] restaurant where I work now, when she was moving on to her HR job and wanted to thank everyone for her chill job that got her through graduation... I have to admit, it was a nice gesture, but it was even more nice to finally have a use for that candle!)

Basically, I hadn't been drinking any whiskey in a while, and I had gotten those potatoes I think back in June with the intention to make potato salad during the summer, only I had forgotten about them.

Sigh.

I really do hate food waste.