The following story is emblematic of my absurd pettiness and my deteriorating mental capacity. First, I obsessively prize the real estate in my refrigerator. I want every item in that fridge to justify its existence within a very short timeline. My mom's entirely out-of-control fridge might be the source of this neurosis. I've arrived at her home and immediately culled from the back of her odiferous top shelf 12-year-old butterscotch sauce and fur-ensconced casseroles of unknown origin. She repays me by arriving at my house with a bag full of wizened produce that she cannot bear to throw away. I share this inability to throw food away, but I handle it by managing what we buy and eat with a surgeon's precision.
I shop judiciously with a concrete vision for every perishable item on the list. Leftover parsley from the linguini with clam sauce will later go into "Ms. Bateman's hot, meaty balls;" (Ms. Batemen is a petite geography teacher who teaches cooking classes on the weekends.) If there are a few sprigs of parsley left over from the meatball recipe, I will make fish chowder and use them as a garnish. Fresh fruit starts on breakfast plates. The second day, I attempt to serve the remaining 8 strawberries from the $7.99 pint, and they are deemed mushy or defective. Those strawberries retire to the smoothie that Tim and I share every morning. Unfinished milk gets microwaved and dumped into coffee. I know exactly how much cream cheese is needed for 3 bagels and an ensuing naughty mashed potato recipe. Yes, I only buy 3 bagels at a time because my kids will only tolerate bagels when they are fresh and rarely for more than one morning of the week. (Yes, I also know that I have created these high-standard ingrates.)
My mother and my husband both optimistically agree that I adore leftovers. I have created this false narrative by transforming leftovers into delectable meals. These transformations have been personal triumphs; however, I'd rather shop for every meal with a French, net bag minutes before I prepare it. In this utopia I would then consume every morsel, and my fridge would be a Tupperware-free zone filled only with champagne and cream for my coffee and perhaps a bit of cheese.
We have recently adopted a dog. It's been difficult, but I forgive him attacking houseguests and ravishing the Christmas tree because he allows me to neither consume nor pitch leftover food. He has an iron stomach and a boundless metabolism. The joy I feel watching the kids unload their thermoses of uneaten chicken and rice into his dish is exacerbated by the fact that I no longer shove the tepid gruel into my own mouth while half-heartedly wondering whether it's been at an optimal temperature for breeding something fatal and I will, therefore, die a wretched death without much pleasure save for the knowledge that a chicken has not died in vain.
Tim gets exasperated by my streamlined fridge. He is terrified when he cooks a meal that he's using an ingredient intended for another purpose. Tim will occasionally venture out to grocery shop. Sometimes he grabs one of the fancy cookbooks languishing on a shelf and creates an amazing meal. Both of these events should be a source of joy and appreciation for me, and yet I kvetch. I can endure the shopping itself, but I cannot watch him unload. He will cram the new lettuce on top of the old in the crisper, and I will develop hives. He will buy every single spice he may need for the one meal every time he cooks. We have 4 containers of paprika, and the single meal costs more than a week's worth of food. Tim also rarely remembers to take the non-disposable shopping bags, so all of his unauthorized purchases emerge from a horrifying pile of plastic that will eventually end up suffocating the last of the sea turtles. He is an impulse shopper. Over Christmas break Tim bought 2 packages of Philadelphia cream cheese on a whim. We had no bagels. We had no potatoes. I asked why he'd bought such an abundance of cream cheese, and he responded, "They were two for the price of one!" I refrained from pointing out that he'd been duped by a marketing ploy and that he could have bought one pack for the discounted price. I also refrained from asking him why he didn't buy the organic cream cheese that I insist on buying. Neither of these has proved productive conversation starters in the past.
Instead I relegated the offending cream cheese to the dairy door in the fridge and the entire subject to the little drawer in my brain for loose ends. Imagine my rapture when one of my New Year's Eve guests told me that she was planning on making a cheese cake for our dessert. She's a good enough friend that she didn't bat an eye when I said, "I have extra cream cheese in my fridge; do you want to use it?" "I only need 1 pack." she responded.
That I have the fridge issues and that I spend this amount of head space on unwanted packs of cream cheese are the first hateful aspects of this story. The next is that the mental energy I'm wasting on cream cheese is actually necessary for my basic functioning. I used to have leeway, but now my peri-menopausal brain can't keep track of everything. I had planned to walk over to cheesecake friend's house with the dog and the cream cheese. I got side-tracked. I had to take Toby to soccer, so I left the cream cheese outside on the mailbox. I probably left the leash on the poor dog as well. I returned from the soccer errand to find JP and his two friends in the living room. I was going to re-embark upon "operation cream cheese transfer" when I could not locate the cream cheese. I assumed that I'd not actually gotten the cream cheese to the intended intermediary mailbox location. Narrating my doleful search for the cream cheese, I checked the fridge multiple times, the car twice, every bin in my mudroom cubby 3 times, and every bare shelf on the first floor of my house. When I lamented to the 3 teenagers loafing on my couch that a packet of cream cheese was floating around somewhere and did any of them see it? two of them did not look up from their devices. The third and only female taunted, "Cream cheese doesn't float!" I had to respond to the no-longer-listening teen that cream cheese probably DOES float because it's mostly fat. So now I'm not only verbally narrating my every move despite the fact that no one is listening; I'm also being annoyingly didactic. Did this happen the day I turned 50 or has it been brewing all along?
I finally gave up. A new section in my brain was erupting with visions of the fetid 6-month-old cream cheese's re-emergence in the car or somewhere else humiliating. I was whining out loud to no one that it's not fun getting old and going crazy. I was starting to wonder if I made up the cream cheese entirely when suddenly the cream cheese sirens sang to me. They lured me, in an omniscient mommy trance to the trash can. I pulled off the R2D2-esque lid and discovered the silver, cardboard packaging (which should have been in the recycling) and the above-pictured, clearly trod-on, packet of cream cheese.
I returned to the three, screen-obsessed children and asked how the cream cheese ended up in the trash. JP said, meekly, "Eli did it!" Eli is much closer to being a man than JP is in so many ways. He has a deep voice, and a peachy/velvet mustache over-shadows his upper lip. He lost his mother when he was in first grade to cancer. His sister is away in college. His dad is a tech teacher in high school. Eli has jobs to earn money. He cycles to school and back. He makes his bed when he spends the night. He is not a kid who gets babied. I looked at him and roared, "Eli!!!!!! you are NO LONGER MY FAVORITE! You are going to have to make your bed so many times to get back in my good graces. Yes, I'm annoyed about the cream cheese, but more importantly, how could you torture me like that????? I'm peri-menopausal. I'm already losing it. I don't need you to help me along. You are a TERRIBLE person!" He said in his deep, Elvis voice, "But it was so FUNNY!" With that I gave them money for pizza and went with my husband to the movies. It must have been hilarious.
Apparently Eli had arrived and spotted the cream cheese on the mailbox. They were probably waiting outside for the dog to stop threatening to consume Eli. Eli asked JP why 8 ounces of cream cheese sat on the mailbox, and JP, of course, had no idea. They stood out there giggling about it. JP flicked it off of the mailbox and onto the ground. Eli verbalized his desire to stomp on it. JP pleaded with his usual forceful bravado, "No, don't!!!" Unable to exercise any sort of impulse-control, Eli succumbed and brought his massive, booted foot down onto the powerless dairy product. I imagine he was hoping for a more-explosive outcome. They braved the dog's ire, entered the house, hid the evidence, and collapsed onto the couch to await Helena's arrival.
Had this scenario played out in 1978, my terrifying mother would have lost her mind. The evening would have ended abruptly. An extensive upbraid of all 3 kids would have been stage one of Susie's assault. Expletives would have been unavoidable. Stage 2: Parents would have been called. A detailed description of the entitled lack of concern for the 800 calories that could have augmented the diet of any number of starving populations would have comprised her ensuing tirade. A dramatic questioning of the floundering morals of all three in their decision to hide the evidence would follow. Her closing argument would have focused on their figuring out a way to reimburse her and her cheesecake friend for the cream cheese and the time she put into looking for it.
My response was to text Eli's dad, somewhat in jest, telling him to ask Eli how he had plummeted from his dizzying, bed-making heights of most-favored friend. The following morning, his dad needed a conversation, and afterwards he required that his son apologize which Eli did via text. I told him it was OK and have called him C.C.C. ever since. (Cream cheese crusher) Is there method to my madness or am I acting like a middle schooler who does not want to be uncool or harsh? Am I remiss? Will my son and his friends never learn impulse control or taking responsibility for their actions? OR will I be the one they come to when they are in a bind in high school and need adult help? Will I ever be able to sit back and relax and just buy a bunch of bagels and invite some neighbors over when there are two 1"x3"x5" slabs of cream cheese cowering in the door of my fridge? Will I always devote a 1"x3"x5" portion of my waning brain matter to a similar-sized dairy product?
Rachel's cheese cake was sublime. The cream cheese must've been really fresh.
