Food fight
leaves couple frosted
Lori Borgman | Monday, Sept. 13, 2010
There are
two types of people: Those who scrape two tablespoons of leftovers into an air
tight box and lovingly place them in the ‘fridge and those who jam them down the
disposal and flip the switch.
Invariably, they wind up marrying each other.
After watching a small container with a handful of peas and two
pearl onions incubate for a week, I cart them to the disposal when someone jumps
over the kitchen island and snatches them from my clutches like they are the
last vegetables on the planet.
“You weren’t going to throw those out were you?” the husband asks.
“No, I was just dangling them over the disposal to taunt them,” I say.
“But I’ll eat them!”
That’s what he always says. My question is when, what color will they be, and
will they have grown hair?
Our ‘fridge overflows with small containers holding two pieces of broccoli,
one tablespoon of tomato paste, five black olives, a one-inch chunk of roast
beef and six grains of wild rice. It would be a regular smorgasbord if we were
crickets, but we are not.
My saver will even box up a half cup of tossed salad with dressing on it and
croutons. The croutons absorb the moisture and expand wildly like those sponge
capsules you drop into a glass of water and watch mushroom into orange sea
horses.
Ten days later he peels back the lid on the salad, takes a sniff and says,
“What’s this?”
“Sea horses,” I say.
He eats it.
The only things we both agree on never throwing out are the condiments. More
than half of our refrigerator is filled with ketchup, mustard, salad dressings,
vinegars and barbecue sauces. We consider condiments a major food group.
I sometimes save leftovers, too, but I use a different system than the
husband. He owns the ‘fridge; I rule the freezer.
I have holiday candy in the freezer that can get us from Halloween through
Valentine’s Day. Nobody ever eats it, so I just keep refreezing it. We have
candy corn hard as a rock, red and white peppermints that have fossilized, and
conversation candy hearts that will crack your molars.
I save a lot of soup, too. If we have two servings left over, I put it in a
container thinking won’t that be nice to pull out of the freezer on a bitter
cold day. Then the cold snap is over, summer is here, and those little blocks of
soup sit there glaring at me as I reach right past them for the ice cream.
We have enough soup in the freezer to eat every night for three months
running. Of course, we’d have to thaw it first.
The husband has no idea I’m a saver, too. What he doesn’t know won’t chill
him.
