A Brimly Newsletter

Room Temperature

What's In Our Fridge, Three Days Before Restock

And why you are seeing it at the worst possible moment of the month.

By Stephnie Grace

August 28, 2026

You’re reading Room Temperature. Every Friday, Steph writes about what actually happens in a gluten-free kitchen: the habits, the honest verdicts, and the recipes worth going back to.

“The fridge.”— Image courtesy of Brimly

Here is the part I’m less proud of. I hate throwing food away, and I throw away yogurt more often than I would like to admit. It happens like this: I’m in the middle of something, I’m certain there are two tubs in there, I open the door and there are in fact two tubs in there, and both of them expired sometime while I wasn’t baking. I will not bake with dairy past its date. So out they go, and I feel awful about it every single time.

Nash gets the brunt of this, and to his credit he has never once said anything about it. He’ll run out for more. Or I’ll put it on Instacart from Wegmans, which is where most of this fridge comes from, or lately on DoorDash, which arrives so fast it feels less like delivery and more like teleportation. Either way the yogurt situation gets resolved immediately, because there is no version of this kitchen that functions without it.

Now, the rest of the shelves.

Cream cheese, and much more of it than usual. There is an event coming and a cheesecake attached to it, and that cheesecake is going to be worth the stockpile. Normally I keep one or two. Right now it looks like I’m preparing for something, because I am.

The butters. Almond, peanut, tahini. I like having all three because you genuinely never know which one a week is going to call for. And then the actual butter: Vermont unsalted, stacked in the door. That is the one thing in this fridge I refuse to economize on. Cheap butter shows up in the finished bake and there is no hiding it.

Poppy. I cut processed drinks out completely for a good while, and recently I have loosened up on that, because I would rather live in the world than at the edge of it. We usually carbonate our own, but sometimes you want the can. If you find a good one, have the good one.

Steel-cut oats, in the fridge. I know. I am aware this is unusual. It is partly a storage question and partly that they keep beautifully in there and I have never noticed a difference in quality. I got oats back not long ago and I have been enjoying them on the chilly mornings, so in the fridge they live.

“Burnt Basque Cheesecake”— Image courtesy of Brimly

Gluten-Free Burnt Basque Cheesecake

See the recipe.

There is fruit, and a lot of citrus, which I restock without thinking about it because I always need a lemon eventually. Some plums that are very good right now and have been getting eaten at midnight. A few figs, which are for the cake. Syrups and purees for the pancake and waffle mornings, which sit there patiently for weeks at a time. And a jar of harissa, which is the obvious outlier in the photo and is there for a meal we’ve been thinking about making.

Because that is the other thing this fridge is for. Whenever we’re working, and especially on a food photo day, we stop somewhere in the middle and put together a family meal out of whatever is in there. Nobody plans it. Somebody opens the door and we figure it out. Yogurt shows up constantly. The bread comes out of the oven and gets sliced while it’s still too hot, and the peanut butter goes straight onto it, and we eat those open-faced with our hands standing right there. Almond butter turns into a shake that I make more often than I mention. Nash juices whatever fruit is left over and hands it around.

I also use the fridge as a place to look for ideas. When I’m stuck on what to develop next, I open it and see what’s in front of me. Which is part of why I keep it stocked with things that aren’t strictly necessary.

“The Gluten-Free Good Bread”— Image courtesy of Brimly

Brimly’s Gluten-Free Good Bread

See the recipe.

And now the confession portion.

Anything that goes in the drawers is gone to me. Not spoiled, just gone. Out of sight and entirely out of mind. Fruit on the upper shelves gets eaten. Fruit in a drawer becomes a small archaeological surprise three weeks later, at which point I am furious with myself for missing it. I do not know how to fix this about myself. There are also, at any given time, one or two zested lemons rolling around in there, naked and full of juice I didn’t need, waiting for a purpose that usually never arrives.

I have been trying to buy organic where I can. Not religiously, but when it’s available and reasonable. I like what I get out of it.

And I recently decided I should be braver about fruit. The plan was to add one new thing to every order and see what happens. Very sensible plan. Off to a rough start.

The first one I tried was a pepino melon. I had read good things. I had done research. I took a bite and felt something close to heartbreak, because it tasted mostly of water and then sat with me strangely afterward. The rest of it stayed in the fridge for a long time out of pure optimism and then went in the bin. I do not expect to buy another pepino melon.

But the yellow mangoes in the same order were spectacular, and Nash and I ate them standing over the sink, which is the correct way to eat a mango and I will not be taking questions.

“Double Berry Sheet Pan Sponge Cake”— Image courtesy of Brimly

Double Berry Sheet Pan Sponge Cake

See the recipe.

So that is the fridge. Not styled, not staged, and caught three days before it gets refilled.

Come Monday it will be full again, and I will be standing in front of it feeling capable and organized and ready for the month, which is a feeling that lasts approximately nine days.

One More Thing!

Back to Basics starts Monday. A month of gluten-free bread, most of it out of the bread machine, and one that is not: a rosemary focaccia baked in a quarter sheet pan, gum-free and soy-free and egg-free and vegan, which I could not find published anywhere so I went ahead and made it myself.

And I want to know about yours. What is the one thing always in your fridge? The thing you would be annoyed to run out of. Write and tell me. I suspect a lot of you are going to say eggs and I am prepared to be wrong about that.

Thanks for reading, and see you next Friday.

Write to me at hello@brimly.co. Past issues are archived here.

Stephnie Grace is a recipe developer, editor, and co-founder of Brimly, specializing in gluten-free, soy-free, and gum-free baking. She writes Room Temperature, which lands every Friday.