One Man's Pie Is Another Woman's Cabbage

Once upon a time, my teaching buddy, Kellie, told me a secret. Oh, it wasn't the key to reaching the students, and turning them into superduper learners, little Einsteins. No. It wasn't how to win friends and influence people. It wasn't even how to stop a psycho neighbor from stealing your morning paper, reading it, and returning it propped up on the breast of a dead sparrow.

Kellie told me how she kept her husband from eating her special delicacies that she stored in the refrigerator. This may not seem earth-shattering to you, but nothing sucks more than having stashed your leftover treats for later, and then finding them gone. Gone, baby, gone. Gone into your husband's stomach, because he thought it was for anyone, because even though he ate HIS portion already, he didn't see why you would want to save yours until later. No matter whether it be leftover Chinese food, a piece of your very own birthday cake, or, in Kellie's case, a chocolate Easter bunny.

The secret was handed down to Kellie by her mother. The mother who exacted revenge on Kellie's buttmunch landlord one time because he kept her security deposit, after she and Kellie spent an entire day cleaning the carpets with a steam-cleaner, and Easy-Offing the oven, and the whole nine yards. That revenge came in the form of Momma visiting the real estate office of the landlord, and upon receiving no satisfaction, asking to use the bathroom, whereupon she spied a tiny tear in the wallpaper, so she pulled it just a little bit, and accidentally ripped a whole sheet of wallpaper off that bathroom wall.

The secret is to wrap whatever you want to save in aluminum foil, and shove it in the back of the fridge. Kellie kept her chocolate Easter bunny until September, munching furtively whenever the mood struck her.

But I'm not here to discuss Kellie's chocolate Easter bunny.

We had a bit of a kerfluffle in The Mansion last night. I was minding my own business, checking football scores on the computer, when Food Critic H sent The Pony to my office. "Dad wants to know if you got the apple pie from Grandma." First of all, I didn't know if 'Grandma' referred to my mom, who is The Pony's grandma, or my own grandma, who Food Critic H had just returned from visiting. If it was MY grandma, how would I have gotten apple pie? I didn't go visit her. She didn't come to The Mansion. So I ruled that one out.

My mom, however, had delivered the #1 son after church. She had cooked a pork loin for us, and gave me a pack of little boxed raisins, but certainly no apple pie. She used to bring us treats from one of her Old Expired Food Shoppe haunts, the one that we call The Day Old Bread Store. In fact, she has brought Hostess apple or cherry pies from there. But nothing today. So my reply to The Pony to relay upstairs to Food Critic H was, "Apple pie? What apple pie?" I know. That sounds guilty as heck. Like something Snack Swiper H would say while stalling for time to get his alibi together.

Food Critic H hollered down, "The apple pie in the soup container in the bottom of the refrigerator." Oh. THAT apple pie. You see, we had a problem. I had sent my grandma some vegetable beef soup via Courier H. It was sealed in the bottom of the refrigerator, in a quart plastic container that I save when I get Hot & Sour soup. They seal up real good. Then I had put the pork loin in the bottom of Frig, my shiny Frigidaire friend, wrapped in foil. Not so much to hide it, but because it arrived wrapped in foil, and that was the only open spot left. While cooking supper, I took out that pork loin and sliced off five pieces. I have lunch duty this week, and no time to warm up my lunch, so I will be taking sandwiches all week. Unbeknownst to Food Critic H, he will be having pork loin for at least two meals this week.

Now between the time I started supper and removed the foiled pork loin, Food Critic H had arrived home from Grandma's house, made a little small talk, and headed out to admire his new goats. Yeah. We have six goats now. Anyhoo, during part of this conversation, I was in the laundry room with my head in the washer. When I came out, GoatHerder H was gone. So I sliced my loins and put the foiled loin and my Saran-wrapped loins back in the bottom of Frig. They toppled off the Velveeta cheese box, and there I saw a soup container of what I assumed was a delicious concoction of cabbage, potatoes, and smoked sausage that we had last week. Only it didn't look so delicious now. It looked kind of lumpy and discolored. So I did what any normal hillbilly would do upon finding spoiled cabbage in the bottom of Frig. I tossed it in the trash can, plastic container and all. It's not a good idea to open a container of spoiled cabbage, by cracky!

When supper was ready, I called The Pony and #1 upstairs from the basement Wii. The trash was full, so I commanded #1 to empty it. The Pony's job is to put in a new bag. #1 tossed the trash bag by the kitchen door, as he is wont to do, to take out at his convenience.

All this pie questioning finally tipped me off that what I had thrown out was not rotten Cabbage Surprise, but special apple pie with artificial sweetener that my grandma had made for Newly Diabetic H. When I told him I threw it out, he ran to the trash bag. I didn't see it, being downstairs, but I sure heard the pitter patter of big work boots chugging through the kitchen. He dug out that hermetically-sealed pie and didn't look back.

Those are really remarkable containers that my Chinese people use for packaging that Hot & Sour Soup.