Maybe, just maybe, one shouldn't keep similar containers, with similar but different contents, side by side in the fridge.

After my recent fishing trip, we had a beautiful King George whiting of almost a kilo, plus a couple of flatheads. King George whiting is one of the premier table fish from the waters of southern Australia. Flatheads are a fish that no one has any trouble catching, they have saved many a fishing trip, and the beauty of them is, despite their ugly appearance, they are also a fine table fish.

My wife D prefers me to cook fish, as she doesn't feel confident enough. I usually just season the fish, no flour, melt some butter over high heat and as it's turning nut brown, place in the fish presentation side down and adjust the heat to stay at a brisk fry. A lot of people say to add oil to help stop the butter burning, but I never do. What burns in the butter are milk solids, adding oil doesn't prevent them from burning, it only dilutes the milk solids, meaning there is less to burn. Heat control is the most important thing. Of course you could fry in oil, but the combination of fish and butter always works a treat.

I had taken fillets from the whiting, but as the flathead were small, left them whole. It's a bit easier to retrieve the fine bones from a flathead after it's cooked, than taking fillets and trying to locate the bones. Also, generally fish cooked on the bone is more succulent.

After the fish were cooked we sat down, D had made a salad, but before I took some she offered to make something else. It turns out that D wanted a yoghurt dressing for the salad and reached in to the fridge for the tub, scooped out some yoghurt, made the dressing and poured it on the salad, then tasted it. What she tasted was sweet with a vanilla aftertaste. D had accidently grabbed the wrong yoghurt tub.

In an effort to salvage the salad, she adjusted with lemon juice. How much would you use? Quite a lot really. We now had a sweet and sour, vanilla flavoured salad. How bad could that be? With the fish on the table, I offered to eat the salad anyway. That offer only lasted until the first mouthful.

Sometimes it's better to throw out and start again.