By Joel Achenbach
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Recently my wife and I helped throw a party and, at the end of the night, found ourselves in possession of multiple large vats of leftovers. This was a problem, bordering on a calamity. Leftovers can be great, but not by the bucketful -- not by the tub, not by the drum. These leftovers, we quickly realized, were going to shadow our every waking moment. Most problematic was the chicken: thousands of little strips crammed and wedged and mashed together in a rectangular, nearly solid block of meat. The very act of removing chicken from the meat-block seemed to generate more chicken than had been there before. This was the ultimate leftovers nightmare: spontaneously generating leftovers. Like something out of ancient mythology. The more you eat, the more there's left over!
We sensed that we would not find peace and serenity until we found a way to eat all that chicken. Every meal suddenly had to involve it. Chicken sandwiches, chicken soup, chicken salad, chicken and eggs, chicken smoothies. Chicken was, for us, what coconuts are to castaways.
Excellent social plans would be thrown into chaos because of our need to process our increasingly dry and unpalatable poultry.
"The guy at work gave us four tickets to the ballgame tonight."
"But . . . what about the chicken?"
The chicken soon became almost like an additional member of the family. But a crazy one. We would try not to talk about the deranged bird in the refrigerator, but we all knew it was there. Our friends gradually came to understand that we had a mysterious Issue that was not to be discussed. Only a few confidants were allowed into the loop, and they would ask, forming their words as sensitively as possible, "Any progress on the, um . . . you know . . . ?"
They meant well, but I noticed that they didn't volunteer to come over and eat any of it. No! When it came to concern, they phoned it in. They drew a line, with them on one side and our leftovers on the other. That's the thing about most modern friendships: They never, ever extend to eating your leftovers. For that you have to rely on immediate family members, and random neighborhood boys.
Let's pull back and think about leftovers in general. Are they an asset or an obligation? Food or just foodstuff?
The very word is fraught with ambiguity. Plural or singular? Clearly it appears to be a plural word, but sometimes we use it as a singular: "We ate leftovers and it was pretty good." The individual components of leftovers can get mixed up and undifferentiated. Left to their own devices, leftovers have a natural desire to become mush.
Everyone has a Leftovers Policy. Like, three days for a drumstick, two for a burger, one for sushi. The policy may be unwritten, or even slightly subconscious, and certainly subject to revision/abrogation should the specific leftover item prove unexpectedly repugnant. The goal for most of us is to be fair to the leftovers. But we've all been burned by them. Nefarious leftover items have wriggled and burrowed and smooth-talked their way into unseen corners of the refrigerator. We all know what we're talking about: food that turns into a little ecosystem that ought to be in a natural history museum. Used to be guacamole, now it's just fuzz.
My wife and I are in a very vulnerable position when it comes to leftovers, because we're affluent enough to buy plenty of food, but not so affluent that we can throw any of it away without hating ourselves. Especially meat. One hears the mewling of the lambs on their way to slaughter.
The problem is, we're also a house full of people -- to be specific, girls -- for whom eating is often a survival tool of last resort. It's something one does only under extreme pressure and after every possible alternative (existing entirely on water and air, for example) has been exhausted.
The purchase of groceries is considered the first act in the long drama of How Will We Get Rid of the Food. My suggestion -- let's eat it! -- inspires heavy sighs and rolling of eyes. This is particularly the case when it comes to leftovers, which tend to be, to put it mildly, disrespected. They're icky. It's like: Ew.
At some point, the chicken took complete control of our lives. We were not really "eating" anymore, much less "dining" or "enjoying a repast." We were just processing food. We were heaving our stomachs into the path of the chicken as it considered its options. Chicken pizza. Chicken Jell-O. Chicken a la mode.
My wife found ways to distribute the chicken around town. She became the Chicken Lady. We also threw another little party and invited some friends who had missed the previous one. But they all knew the back story, and their attitude was, "Great! We'll eat old food from a party to which we weren't even invited!" No one touched the chicken sandwiches except for my wife and me.
We dropped off a tub of chicken with my friend Mike, who was gracious enough to accept our food debris. He, in turn, quickly got on the horn and made a bunch of calls: "We've got all this leftover chicken! Drop by and eat some!" What Mike didn't realize is that:
1) In his haste he did not make clear, in his invitation, whether he, Mike, would actually be in attendance at the leftover-chicken-eating event.
2) His invitation did not communicate to the invited parties that they possessed any social attribute other than their ability to consume the old food. And thus:
3) The invited parties felt as though they were being treated, literally, like dogs.
Gradually, piece by piece, we put some serious dents in the meat-block. One day we realized that we had reached a turning point, as it were: The chicken, dried out, unpalatable, had lost its plausible edibility. Oh, happy day! Yes, it would still be wasteful and shameful to throw it away (I hear my Mom, circa 1967: "People are starving in India!"), but it wasn't entirely our fault. We'd tried to eat it, but it had gone bad, or was thinking of going bad imminently. It had malign intentions. Also it now had the moisture content of rubber bands. The chicken strips were suddenly useful only as packing material or Christmas ornaments.
So we gave it the heave-ho. Bagged it up, hurled it into the SuperCan. Free at last!
Except that when you have a very close relationship to a specific batch of leftovers, you never really say goodbye. They infiltrate your dreams, mocking you, chiding you, taunting you.
They always say the same thing: Eat me.
Joel Achenbach is a Washington Post staff writer and blogs at washingtonpost.com/achenblog.
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