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Six. Six french fries sprawled indulgently on a dinner plate, a short distance away from an Olympic-sized pool of ketchup, the lot of which is swathed in plastic wrap and sitting front and center in my refrigerator. Whether it's the ketchup or the fries we're trying to preserve, is anyone's guess. Maybe it's contemporary art, though I smell an attempt to ditch a dirty plate. If it's the result of our attempts to make our children mindful of waste, we have overshot the mark.
We've all been taught that waste is bad because there are people in the world who actually don't have food. We've all wondered in our naîve youth why we don't just pack some up and ship it to them? When I grew up my parents invoked China. Since then, there have been more real and fictional starving people used to goad our children into finishing their dinner. We do take waste seriously here, but I often suspect there are other motives at play for the items stored in our fridge.
Until you've observed a child in the kitchen, you've not properly understood the dilemma represented by a plate with unwanted food on it. The kid has been absolved from eating any more, now what? Kitchen sink water becomes the enemy. Well really, that whole area concerned with cleaning is best avoided. Because, the same kids – who as toddlers could frolic for hours in any kind of water, the dirtier the better; who now spend 40 minutes in the shower; who will wipe their mouths on the kitchen hand towel – are more likely to lick a seat on a public bus than endeavor anything that might put them at risk for wetness of the kitchen sink variety. Touching the sponge is known suicide.
Since rinsing is not an option for the obvious reason of potential wetness, the next way to get rid of food would be the garbage can. Or, shiver, the compost bin. Each requires a trip of several whole steps, lifting a lid and tilting the plate. For them It's all too dirty and tedious to contemplate.
But saving the leftovers. Parents love saving. A bit of plastic wrap and the potential contamination crisis is well and truly averted.
This is how we combat waste in the First World, one french fry at a time. Starving children of Africa, you can all be grateful for the American child who has so thoughtfully preserved six french fries, in the interest of ending world hunger. An American child wrestled with - and used - 8 yards of plastic wrap so that nothing would be thrown away. He overcame being moistened by running water, from a sink in a kitchen. He bravely dodged the machine that washes them for us. There is no shortage of altruism here in the West.
As the Lord and Keeper of the fridge, and it seems that I am, given that I stock it, clean it and do my best to keep it free of half-drunk coffees, weeping cucumbers and old seafood, I feel it is within my purview to make some observations about refrigerator etiquette – or lack thereof. If God had been blessed with a Whirlpool 4-Door French Door Stainless Steel WRX7, I'm sure he'd back me on my commentary. If not the flock, the Tupperware needs a leader.
To save or not to save? If nobody liked it to begin with, aging will not improve the level 10 yuck factor. Yet, the refrigerator provides a convenient suspension of guilt induced by throwing stuff away. You know it's just a stopping-off point between theoretical use and utter waste. Still, you dutifully package it up to postpone that nagging shame and then earnestly search the Web for "How to re-use kale chowder." Maybe you pack some for lunch at work, knowing you're going to bin it and go to Wendy's when the time comes. Only when it has grown a proper green fuzz are you justified in tossing the chowder.
Preserving food is a bit of a compulsion for adults, who tend toward the No Food Left Behind Policy. The parental phrase "It'd be a shame to waste it" is never far from our lips. Because of the Depression-era generation – and very nice refrigerators – we have "leftovers." Consider such concoctions as meatloaf, casserole, and stew for which the ingredients are often leftovers themselves! Nevertheless, it does seem criminal to throw food away, but at what point do you draw the line? How many Brussels sprouts are too few to save?
That depends on whether and which type of human garbage disposal you have in your household. We've got the Ingestinator 350. There's almost nothing, he says, that won't "be great in an omelette" or that won't make for a tasty lunch the next day. Due to faulty wiring this model is just as likely to utter "smells okay to me," as it is "good morning."
We also have a fairly reliable Guzziluxe for whom breakfast might be anything from sushi to short ribs and coleslaw. With this level of unscrupulous consumption, it's hard to find good reasons to toss leftover food. But, six fries?
There are occasions when a fridge may be peppered with "hot commodities" like pudding cups, guacamole, bacon, shepherd's pie, lamb chops, or prime rib that you can't get unless you wake up in the middle of the night – and fight whomever had the same idea. These are leftovers of privilege, that sit uncomfortably next to stuffed cabbage and cauliflower mash. They whine about the smell, complain their real estate value is going down and hope for swift consumption. These are the ones the starving people in Africa might actually enjoy.
A refrigerator will also, astonishingly, sometimes be overcrowded with jars, bottles and plastic containers with nothing in them at all! For me, it's a crime worse than waste. I always make the mistake of trying to figure out what would compel a person to put a totally empty bottle back into a refrigerator. The conundrum overwhelms my brain. Lately, I've resorted to embracing the bottles and jars void of food. I stand in front of the $3,000 stainless steel unit and marvel at the empty containers. I behold the miracle of refrigeration. It even cools plastic and glass! At which point I am able to close the door, and walk away, somewhat less homicidal.
Of course, the refrigerator is not the only place we keep empty packages. Decoys, if you will. The pantry is a sanctuary of denial. "Who ate all the ___" . . . "Not me!" Well, no, technically not, because there is still a fine film of Jalapeno Cheez It dust on the wax paper insert. It should be pointed out here, to the McSaversons, the curators of empty snack packages, that the starving children of Anywhere are not interested in licking the inside of your empty boxes.
The overworked, overwrought freezer is a more frightening window into our consumptive and misguided souls. If ever you really are concerned about world hunger, empty your freezer. Here are enough calories for your whole family for months, up to and including likely dinners of two-year old garden chili peppers and pumpkin pie filling. If it were the final days of the world as we know it, you'd consider the doomsday option.
Americans, with our streak of survivalism do use the freezer to "stock up" for situations, like famine or possibly the apocalypse or the much fabled but far less likely time when we "have people over" and need 16 pounds of skirt steak at a moment's notice.
The freezer is the place for 12 gallons of okra stew that nobody wanted but might get better with freezer burn? It's for Aunt Ethel's Thanksgiving stuffing complete with turkey beak. It's for the family's dead hamsters, birds and half-finished science projects. For ice packs, decades old homemade slushies, and a neighbor's gift of squirrel cassoulet. It's for the money-saving trips to Costco and Sam's Club where we purchase items packaged for entire military units and then bring them home to freeze for "that time when" -- hell freezes over, must be, and we need 134 breakfast burritos STAT.
Oh sure, for some, the freezer is the place for ice cream bars, chocolate covered eclairs, bomb pops or cookie dough. But these novelty items, like their tastier pantry brethren have a brief shelf life and in fact are often mythical. Best not to savour that late night bowl of ice cream or those stolen spoonfuls of cookie dough because these containers too are likely just that. Well-preserved containers. "Who ate all the ____?" Nevermind, send the containers to Africa. I'll just scrape the frost off Aunt Edna's stuffing.
Not wasting, being eco-friendly and observing proper kitchen etiquette often simply overlap to the extent that maintaining a refrigerator and indeed the kitchen can be exasperating. Finding food in the place you left it, that is still edible, is certainly a challenge, as is finding everything where you left it, but empty. It helps to lower your expectations. We do have a dead bird in our freezer – long story – though before I resort to parakeet-en-croute there is one staple I know I can rely on.
At the end of the day, come hell or high water, there's an item you'll always find in our pantry, and, wrapped, unwrapped, stuck to the bottom of a shelf, or oozing yuletide melancholy is the Christmas fruitcake. We have two, actually. Commemorating Christmases 2016 and 1977. Come on over!
