It’s finally happened.
I’ve turned into my dad.
This evening, during NPR’s new age music programming, I found myself washing, drying and chopping up every bit of the produce we bought at the store today, and then packing it away in neat little plastic containers. I even parceled out the Greek yogurt into containers and taped a Lactaid tablet to the top of each one.
I had to check myself in the mirror to make sure I hadn’t sprouted a beard. This is exactly the sort of anal-retentive behavior my dad used to display. He’d crank up the space-age music (“Bladerunner” theme anyone? John Williams?”) and hack up a cantaloupe.
You’d kind of worry that he was dealing with some “Alien Nation”-related aggression issues.
Dad used to call the Alien Nation aliens "cantaloupe heads." But then again, he also called asparagus "Fraggle tails."
Seriously though, he may have had a point. Not about the aliens. About the produce.
I’m trying this experiment for a few reasons:
First of all, I’m punctuality-challenged, so I’m hoping that pre-cut veggies will help me get my salads assembled quickly in the a.m.
Second, if I don’t make some time to wash my veggies, we’re going to eventually eat something disgusting or lethal.
Third, we are spending [i]way[/i] too much on produce for two people. We buy a lot, it goes bad and then it becomes fertilizer for the garden. So I want to see how long produce keeps when it’s cut, washed and in air-tight containers. And maybe I will be more likely to snack on produce that’s already been cut up.
Who knows? Mom and Dad used to complain that if they didn’t cut up cantaloupes, we would never eat them. Maybe they were right. So there you go. I’m off to chop the tails off some Fraggles.
Ann,
He still makes little packages of food when he sails on Tantalus. It is very convenient and keeps the boat neat on day long trips. Neat is my short suit, so any attemps by the crew are appreciated. Where does he find the smallest ziplock bags ever seen in captivity?
As a side bar? Thought the “pay jay” might be an effort to receive renumeration for all the keystrokes.
I think Dad gets those tiny bags in big packages, which is to say Costco. I’d be willing to bet chocolate that there’s an industrial-sized box of microscopic baggies in my parents’ pantry.
Oh and to explain “pay-jay,” that was a joke in our newsroom a few years ago. I was the schools reporter, and at the time we had a schools page, and it was always covered with my copy. So we started calling it the A.J. Pay-jay. It sounded awesome, but spelling it has always been an issue.
I think your choice of music for this endeavor is fascinating. Can’t wait to hear what happens with the veggies—I may be inspired to do the same thing; it’s insane how much produce waste we produce over here.