Leftovers

I don't believe in leftovers, and I know exactly why.

My dad grew up in a big family that never had enough money. In his words, if you didn't run to the dinner table right away every evening, all the food would get eaten and you'd starve. To my dad, every scrap of food that makes it to the table is precious. I can clearly recall several instances where he would protest "No-no-no-no-NO" if I ever tried to throw any food away.

I grew up in a big family with more than enough money (most of the time). My father is a compulsive food-hoarder, and my mother is an extremist grocery-shopper. Everything is so cheap at the Comissary, how can you not load 3 full shopping carts full of stuff on every trip, especially with so many mouths to feed. When you cook for 11 other people each night, it's very easy to make too much food. When you make too much food, half of it ends up in the fridge. And the fridge at my parent's house is like purgatory for food. It might make it out one day, it might not.

This leads to a nightmarish situation where almost everything that's in the fridge has gone bad. That's why if I ever end up with too much food for dinner, I just keep cramming it in my face. The refrigerator is for storing food that we haven't eaten yet, not for saving food that we weren't hungry enough to finish. I would rather throw stuff away than to hold on to it for a later date on the off chance that one night I'll be craving something that isn't quite fresh anymore. If this makes me a spoiled first-world person, so be it. Take a look at my parent's fridge one day, you'll understand. Do you have any idea what a potato looks like six months after you buy it? And the smell, that's the worst of it. So please don't feed me any leftovers. All it makes me think about is a green potato with three arms growing out of it.