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In our super-size, buy-one-get-one-free society, having
enough is simply, well, not enough. In a study published this year
in the Journal of the American Medical Association, University of
North Carolina researchers reported that portion sizes at fast-food
chains, conventional restaurants and even at home had increased
as much as 50% between 1977 and 1996. [1]
Although our parents’ admonishments to clean our plates may
still echo in our heads, the endeavor becomes more daunting every
day. 52-ounce Big Gulps, super-size fries and pallets’ worth
of Costco chicken have certainly skewed our sense of proportion.
We’re conditioned to over-consume: bigger is not only better,
it’s easier, faster and cheaper, too.
In a time when the temptation to jump the gravy train
to obesity lurks around every corner, how can you get the most for
your money, keep your taste buds suitably entertained, and maintain
that girlish figure? Leftovers. They’re what’s for dinner...and
lunch...and breakfast...
Once upon a time, under better economic circumstances
(a euphemism for the “dotcom boom,”) this penchant for
over-abundance was less problematic. Leftovers were ultimately disposable.
Sure, it was nice to take home a souvenir from a particularly good
meal, but if I didn’t want to lug a greasy, smelly doggy bag
to a bar or a movie afterwards, who would blame me for leaving the
last few bites of pork chop on my plate? And what if it wasn’t
such a good meal? I could afford to be discriminating in my leftover
selections. After all, not everything makes a great leftover: most
salads and anything deep-fried promise nothing but soggy morning-afters.
On the home front, I patted myself on the back for foresight in
cooking enough of one dish to last a week, but should an unexpected
dinner date come along, it was no big deal if my lasagna turned
up moldy the next weekend. There was more where that came from.
Leftovers were like a subterranean bonus level in Super Mario Brothers.
They added to your point total, but they didn’t guarantee
you’d rescue the princess.
Now, in markedly leaner times, leftovers take on a new importance.
What once looked like garbage now looks like lunch. It’s Tuesday
afternoon: I just ate last Friday’s just so-so Vietnamese
noodles for the 4th (and thankfully final) time. I’m excited
about the green beans, rice and ma-po tofu in the fridge, also from
Friday. I just cancelled my dinner plans to stay home, eat leftovers
and watch Law and Order. And I’m even getting creative. Last
week, in a moment of what could only be deemed inspired gastronomic
genius, I used the remnants of a baked red snapper filet to enhance
a green onion and rice noodle soup that had turned out too bland.
Leftovers are no longer just for reheating. They can be transmuted,
combined and re-combined in ever engrossing patterns to conserve
and prolong their nutritive (or at least belly-filling) value. As
a result, interesting new tastes emerge, some imminently edible,
others admittedly pushing the limits of digestion. Perhaps I’ve
stumbled upon a new cooking specialty: a modern day stone soup,
a new form of alchemy.
Although I’m proud of my explorations in this
burgeoning new field of culinary study, I must admit, there’s
something that strikes me as just a little pathetic about all this
thriftiness. The enjoyment, excitement, and relish accompanying
fresh, just-cooked food have been replaced by the stolid, practical
comfort of a well-stocked fridge. Fullness has become more important
than flavor; sustenance takes priority over pleasure. I worship
at the altar of Ziploc and Rubbermaid. There’s no way around
it: economic necessity has taken some of the zest out of eating,
and although my leftover concoctions may actually taste as good
as fresher fare, the fact that I am bound to eat them, day after
day, does little to substitute for the pleasure found in the more
whimsical eating habits of free-wheeling days gone by.
But there are reasons deeper than economy that keep
me from cleaning out the back of the fridge. The cult of fullness
over tastiness has its own devotees, chief among them, my mother.
Not quite a decade ago, with the nation barely on the verge of a
food obsession of gastronomic proportions (of which the most salient
evidence is a TV channel pumping food porn into our homes 24 hours
a day), my parents had dinner with some friends at the French Laundry.
At the time, Chef Thomas Keller was just beginning his ascent to
culinary super-stardom, but every high-powered food critic in the
nation had waxed rhapsodic over the quality, ingenuity and sheer
brilliance of his dishes. While my father and his friends exclaimed
over the exquisite food and excellent wine pairings, my mother starved.
She ate, of course, but her only memory of the meal was that she
was still hungry afterwards. Her criterion for a good meal was not
“Is it interesting?” nor even “Does it taste good?”
but “Am I full yet?”
For my mother, fullness, above all else, must be carefully
guarded and maintained, and leftovers are an integral part of that
endeavor. Caught between the rock of thrift and the hard place of
hunger, she is bound by duty to consume anything that has yet to
descend into putrefaction, no matter the cost to her taste buds.
My mother saves half a cup of rice if that’s what’s
left in the rice cooker. She’ll reheat it in the microwave
for breakfast the next day with leftover chicken tortilla casserole
and some graying broccoli. The impetus behind my own leftover alchemy
clearly comes from her: nothing remotely edible can ever, in good
conscience, be thrown away.
Both my parents come from working class families who often
had to struggle to keep food on the table, a memory that no doubt
lingers to this day. I remember a lunch of cold noodles at my grandparents’
house. The noodles must’ve been old, and my grandmother must’ve
been a little near-sighted, because they arrived in the bowls studded
with tiny dead black bugs. My sister and I wouldn’t touch
them, but my grandfather calmly picked out the bugs and proceeded
to eat the noodles. The methodical way in which he ate, so matter
of fact, so unperturbed, reminds me now of the way my mother eats
leftovers. Resigned yet resolved, she’s the last one at the
table – the last bit of salad, piece of meat, scoop of rice,
all disappear quietly and uncomplainingly into her mouth.
I feel a bit unfair characterizing this compunction
as completely joyless; after all fullness possesses a sleepy pleasure
all its own, and there is no denying the satisfaction to be gained
upon reaching the dizzying heights of thriftdom. But perhaps there
is yet another pleasure buried somewhere therein. My mother enjoys
combing flea markets for antique sewing machines, vintage glassware,
toy taxicabs. She likes things because they are old, because they
show the marks of use and time, or perhaps because they remind her
of a different (better?) era. Perhaps my mother’s compulsive
relationship to leftovers is not just about economy and fullness;
perhaps it’s a simple recognition of the passage of time.
After all, some foods are actually better as leftovers. There’s
nothing more pleasurably guilt-inducing than a slice of cold pizza
in the morning. I can feel my arteries hardening like so much congealed
cheese with every bite, but I keep eating. Chili, meatloaf, spaghetti
sauce and soup all improve in flavor and richness with a little
sleepover chez fridge. Flavors mellow, intermingle and become more
distinct, or sometimes softer. Some things are better experienced
over the distance of a little time.
My father, although emerging from a similar socio-economic
background, is a staunch leftover-dodger. While my mother consumes
a bric-a-brac of salvaged remains, my father prepares the same “new”
food for himself every day, subsisting chiefly on a diet of hot
oatmeal cereal, turkey sandwiches, and Fritos. He has never bought
a used car, vintage piece of clothing or floor model TV. Compared
to my mother, he might seem downright wasteful, and I suppose they
complement each other in a Jack-Sprat-and-wife kind of way, but
he’s actually also deeply thrifty. But rather than spend his
energy recapturing the past, he prefers to spend it preserving the
present. His cars are kept in showroom-mint condition. His super-sized
front lawn is always neatly manicured and evergreen. I imagine his
perfect world to be a perpetual present where nothing ever wears
out, spoils or falls apart. Wasteful people don’t appreciate
the value of what they have. My father values what he has so much,
he would stop time to save it.
Although more like my father in almost every way,
when it comes to leftovers, I am most definitely my mother’s
daughter. The other night, while cooking dinner together, my lover
and I had a fight. The dish we chose -- Japanese potato dumplings
stuffed with shrimp -- was too complicated, involved every pot and
gadget in my tiny kitchen and had us stumbling over each other and
arguing for the better part of 2 hours. The outcome was depressingly
bland -- not worth the effort or aggravation. The next day, alone,
I took the leftovers out of the fridge, wincing at the memory of
the previous night's debacle. I had an almost irresistible urge
to throw them away, to rid myself not only of their pale, insipid
gooeyness, but of last night’s ugliness as well. But my mother
raised me better than that, so I hunkered down and dutifully ate
them. Each bite was as painfully tasteless as the day before, but
frankly, I was surprised they had not turned bitter.
Time leaves its mark, and I suppose my newfound embrace
of leftovers is a way of coming to terms with it. In his book, Soul
of a Chef, Michael Ruhlman attributes food’s mysterious
ability to permeate our psyches (as well as our bellies) to the
life cycle itself. To put it plainly, food is evidence that living
things die in order to sustain the lives of other living things.
Nothing is more basic than that. Food is fascinating because it
encapsulates the terms of our very existence. If raw, just-shucked
oysters are life itself, pulsing and shimmering on a plate, then
leftovers are the echoes, the waning of that life, temporarily embalmed
in Tupperware. They embody the passing of time itself, devolving
gracefully in the back of the fridge.
[1] Nielsen, Samara Joy and Popkin, Barry M.
“Patterns and Trends in Food Portion Sizes, 1977-1998.”
The Journal of the American Medical Association. 2003 Jan 22-29;289(4):450-453
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