Science Cookies

The time since my last blog has been spent finding a cure for the Midnight Munchies, and in that time my focus was pulled first to a very attractive plate full of chocolate chip cookies. What could be better? I snatch one up, shove half of it into my mouth, and just about gag. It was still pretty fresh, and it had been covered in the few hours since its conception, so what went wrong?

The blame ultimately comes down on a good friend of mine from high school. He came by for the Halloween party thrown by my wife and I, and as requested he brought some contributions. Now, the particular drink he brought over was of very, very high alcohol percentage, and may or may not have been home-made by a family friend of his. I use such vague allusions because, well, it may or may not have actually been a legal drink for him to possess. Anyway, it smelled as though it were a part of some child prodigy's science project. Ever the gentleman, he left it behind for us. A couple of days later, complaints are floating around the house of some smell in the fridge. What's worse, the smell is soaking into all of our food. It didn't really get to me right off because I have a knack for ignoring such unpleasantries, but tonight was the final straw. There has to be a solution to this! My wife has been keeping a fresh supply of baking soda in there since the drink was removed, but it's not really doing the job like she says it does.

My frustrated research tells me this: baking soda, while it does have some neutralizing effect on the odors (the pH of baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, is mildly basic which neutralizes acids that cause the odors), very little actual surface area of baking soda gets exposed to the fridge and what does gets kind of crusted over by the vapors floating around. Useless.

Unfortunately, much as I hate to leave you all in a state of anti-climax, the only other solution I can find is a canister of activated charcoal. If there's another answer out there, it's just not quite urgent enough to devote any more time to the matter tonight.