It's Hardly the Resurrection

     I was standing in line at the grocery store last week when a woman and her 3 sons walked by.  It was late in the afternoon and I could tell each kid was dreaming of food and a venue far removed from the boring grocery store he had been forced to endure.  As she struggled to push her overloaded cart past the crowd waiting for a turn at the cash register, one of the boys said, “Mommyyyyy!  I’m hungryyyyy!”  She sighed and said, “We’re going home, honey.  Just wait a little longer and we’ll eat soon.”  Another boy chimed in, “What are we having?”  The mother raised her eyebrows to her hairline, pursed her lips in an effort to look excited, inhaled sharply and said, “Leftovers!  YUMMM!” 

     Leftovers.

     It’s one of those words I hate like “cluster”, “skin tag”, and “ironing”.  The mere word “leftovers” conjures images of foods that have outlived their usefulness, worn out their welcome: wrinkled green beans, mushy pasta, hopelessly separated sauces, rubbery meat with a bizarre aftertaste.  A mere shadow of its former glory, a leftover reminds me of a singer from a bygone era, still belting out antique tunes on a stage in Branson.  It’s just sad and I can’t bear the thoughts.  I don’t see pasty, soggy fried chicken … I see 80-year-old Elvis, still strutting his saggy stuff across a glossy stage, his quivery voice cracking as he bumps and grinds his walker to a “party at the county jail”.

      I began to wonder if I was completely alone in my disdain.  I’ve known people who cooked three days’ worth of food on a Friday and then re-warmed it the whole weekend long.  (*wave of nausea*)  A woman standing at the deli counter once told me that she bought herself a rotisserie chicken and would then “eat on it all week”.  (*gulp*)  Nanny used to boil leftover meat and make stir-fry out of it.  (*heave*)  Apparently, just like s’mores, green bean casserole, and onion straws, leftovers are very popular … and I’ve never exactly had an affinity for what is popular. 

     This may explain my hatred for frozen entrees, which are little more than commercially prepared leftovers with a half-teaspoon of blueberry crumble for dessert.  It’s a frozen doggy bag for crying out loud, and people spend millions every year buying this stuff.  I don’t get it.  What pains me are the colorful terms people use for their leftovers: “seconds”, “dinner revisited”, “encore”, “Lazarus” … really?  You’re naming your chewy roast beef and withered carrots after a “revisited” dead guy?  (And on a side note, if carrots are so full of wrinkle-fighting antioxidants, why do the “resurrected” ones look like my great, great grandma?) 

     This is the one area where my best friend, Pocahontas, and I don’t see eye-to-eye.  She will order an extra-large picnic meal from the local Chicken Frying Experts down the street and then refrigerate it.  Over the next few nights, she and her family will heat up the leftovers for dinner, and the put them back in the fridge again.  The mere thoughts of this makes me shudder.  Only in my nightmares could I invent anything more unbelievably horrendous.  Like every rule, there are a few exceptions.  I have no trouble reheating spaghetti sauce (sans pasta), chili, black bean soup, or Chinese takeout fried rice.  And that’s about it.  Yes, it means I have to cook every night.  Yes, it means I have to carefully consider how much I am preparing to prevent waste.  Yes, it means I am treated to a fresh creation every time.  And that, to me, is worth every ounce of effort.  It’s how I show love to my family and how I feel like I have done my best for them.  Pocahontas, on the other hand, has no issues with leftovers.  Her issue lies in the painstaking effort of cooking.  She hates it.  She absolutely hates it.  She would much rather reorganize her organized closet organizational system or polish her polished table until it is spotlessly polished with furniture polish.  That’s what floats her boat.  That’s what makes her feel like her home is, well, homey.  She refrains from singing “White Christmas” to my dusty picture frames, and I manage to stop myself from singing “Cold, Cold Heart” to the Chicken Frying Experts box in her fridge.  Our differences make us who we are, and that’s OK. 

     But I still hate leftovers.

© Bertha Grizzly 2011.  All Rights Reserved.  No duplication or distribution.

No Mans Land

     I took a few days off from my usual riveting schedule of work, dinner, dishes, laundry, rinse and repeat.  It was time away from my day job to work on my other full time job of running the Grizzly household.  And since the hub of our household is the kitchen, I decided to tackle the most hated of all jobs.  The job that makes me look forward to a pap smear.  The job that makes small children weep and grown men turn pale.  The job that was declared off-limits by the Geneva Convention.  I decided to clean the refrigerator.  Now how on earth, you’re wondering, does such a remarkably well-organized gal like Bertha end up with a refrigerator in such scary shape?  That’s easy. 

     I live with people. 

     If I lived alone, my refrigerator would be a fascination worthy of a magazine spread.  Perfectly wrapped food, no leftovers of any kind because I hate them, and condiments left in the same place each time.  Perfection.  Absolute perfection.  BUT, as I said before, I live with people.  The Yankee and his sports drink addiction lets me know that there will be no less than 12 value size bottles of what I think of as salty, watered down, flat soda.  But he loves it so what can I say.  Then there’s Buttercup. Bless her sweet little heart.  Somewhere deep in the recesses of her little autistic mind, she has this sincerely held, undefeatable, unshakeable belief that empty cups belong in the refrigerator.  Do they belong in the sink so they can be washed?  No.  Do they belong on the counter so they can be refilled?  No.  Do they belong in the trash can to be discarded even though it is wasteful beyond comprehension?  No.  Empty cups belong in the refrigerator.  I’ve bowled a perfect turkey in my own refrigerator just trying to get a carton of eggs to its rightful place on the shelf.  One false move by that dastardly carton and crash!  A perfectly aligned row of empty cups falls over in the back of the refrigerator.  I’ve tried explaining it to her, catching her with an empty cup and directing her to the sink, creating helpful songs to the tune of various Queen hits, drawing a picture story to illustrate my point, but to no avail.  Then there’s our canine family.  Before you have a heart attack, may I just point out that our dogs do not have opposable thumbs, are not allowed to congregate in the kitchen, and certainly do not have refrigerator privileges.  But they are certainly represented.  The Yankee keeps zip-top bags of fat, meat scraps, and small bones in said bags for the purposes of a once weekly dinner treat.  Not that I mind having our discarded leftovers going to a greater cause, it is the bags in general that meet with my objection.  Who wants to see a bag of jiggly, smushy, old fat in the refrigerator?  “Not I”, said Bertha. 

     So, I set about trying to clean out the disgusting bits of what was once a meal fit for a king.  I toss.  I scrub.  I scour.  I bleach until I smell like a hotel swimming pool.  I put everything back where it belongs.  Whole grain mustard actually next to the Dijon mustard.  Mayonnaise next to the 2 other jars of mayonnaise.  Pickles next to pickle relish. Isn’t that an amazing phenomenon?  “Like” things together?  But then again, I live with people and those people return home from their various destinations and life resumes its normal pattern.  In no time my shelves are filled with bottles of salty, watered down, flat soda.  My bowling game is dramatically improving thanks to the rows of empty cups neatly arranged with their respective labels facing the same direction.  Little bags of wobbly meat fat fill the bottom corner.  I sigh and say nothing as I shudder to myself.  I live with people, and I love them.  My world would be a neatly arranged, perfectly matched, harmonious refrigerator sitting in a lonely house with a crazy woman wandering aimlessly, looking for an excuse to smell like a hotel swimming pool.

  

© Bertha Grizzly 2011.  All Rights Reserved.  No duplication or distribution.