COLUMN: Don’t Mind the Mess – Put a lid on it, if you can find one

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/08/2020 (1774 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Supper’s over and now I’m left with the burning question: Is that cup of leftover stew really worth saving?

My frugal Mennonite conscience won’t let me throw it out, so I decide to do what I do with most leftovers: I keep it in the fridge until it smells funny. When the Tupperware starts burping on its own, and the food reaches a point of toxicity that even my cat would find repulsive – and he eats dead mice – I chuck it.

As the magnet on my fridge door boldly states: If it walks out of the refrigerator, let it go.

Like prayer and the promises of a better, less hysterical tomorrow, leftovers are every busy mother’s essential survival tool. And they make great threat material. If kids don’t eat the disgusting, vegetable-laden goop mom’s got in the casserole dish, they’re stuck with leftovers. After one whiff of those, anything mom makes is gourmet cuisine.

If you’re on a tight budget, leftovers can be recycled again and again. Monday’s spaghetti sauce can become Tuesday’s sloppy joes, which can become Wednesday’s taco burger, leading to Thursday’s chili. You get the idea.

Maybe every family has a “leftovers day”. In our case, it’s Sunday. I’m not sure how this tradition started. Maybe there’s something soul-cleansing about cleansing my fridge of all evil. At any rate, there I am, pulling out containers of leftovers in every stage of evolution, and displaying them on the counter like some horrible buffet in Hades. Not a pretty sight.

But, oddly enough, on Sunday my family will eat anything. Like human garburators, they chew the stuff almost joyfully. It’s unreal, and more than a little spooky, but I’m not complaining.

A guy named Calvin Tillin once wrote: “The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”

That’s the thing about leftovers. After about a week, they kinda stop looking like the original food.

Back to the stew dilemma. I finally find the perfect container, and that’s where the nightmare starts. I have to find a lid. I have dozens of plastic containers of all shapes and sizes. I also have dozens of plastic lids. But none of them fit any of the containers. I don’t know how this happened, since they all started out together. There is no logical explanation.

I’ve talked to other people who have experienced the same phenomena. Our theory is that sometime during the night, the container gremlins creep into our cupboards and switch all our lids. And I’m pretty sure they are the cousins of the gremlins who stole my socks, car keys, TV remote, nail clipper and cell phone. If anybody has a better theory, I’d like to hear it.

I’ve seen all kinds of inventions and solutions to the container lid dilemma, like lid caddies and lids that stay attached to the container. In the end, they all disappear in the dark, mysterious abyss of my kitchen cupboard, never to be seen or heard from again. Thank goodness for Saran Wrap.