Fact: Bananas are curved because they grow towards the sun. – Bananas go through a process called “negative geo-tropism.” A tropism is plant movement in response to an external stimulus in the environment. If a plant moves towards a stimulus, it exhibits positive tropism; if a plant moves away from a stimulus, it exhibits negative tropism. This process causes the fruit to grow upwards towards the sun instead of the ground. This, in turn, gives the banana its familiar curved shape.
Happy eighth-month adversary, oops, anniversary, to us! We are very happy and enjoying life. I love Mary’s sense of humor! She asked me a few days ago, “Do you know what day this is?” She loves scaring me!
Today we recovered from the trip, and I cannot figure out how two people can be gone three days and do six wash loads! Ah, two times three is six; I got it!
I did assist Mary all day long; I cranked the ringer and carried the clothes to the clothes-line outside.
I have my marching orders!
The temperature was in the 80s, so we decided to dine al fresco. I shocked Mary because I thought that meant “dine naked,” so when I showed up sans clothes, she was shocked! She screamed, pointed, and said, “What is that?” I thought she was talking about the glass of orange liquid I was carrying, and then I realized what she was pointing at.
I was mortified and quickly put back on my clothes and looked up the word “al fresco.” Dang! Mary was correct; it means “to dine in the open air.”
After the initial shock was over, lunch was delightful, and things returned to “normal.”
After doing the wash and hanging everything up, we watched the news to see how the war was going and worked on the latest brain-teaser entitled Autumn Splendor II, a 500-piece puzzle!
We are making some progress, albeit slow!
When I got frustrated with the puzzle, I would turn around and work on the computer for a while. Maintaining the website is beginning to come back to me. I have the St. Patrick’s Day site ready to go for this year and fixed a lot of brokes from years gone by!
It came upon 3:00 PM, and Mary had an appointment at 4:00 PM in Newport Beach. OH, CRAP, that means I get to fix dinner. Well, that’s OK because Mary showed me a pile of left-overs, and should I accept the challenge, we can make some clearance in the frig!
Decisions decisions!
At 5:30 PM, the phone rang; I sprang into action, jumping over several chairs and answering the expected challenge, “Hi Sweetie, I am on my way home!” Fear immediately stormed my entire being; I must meet the challenge!
I bounded into the kitchen and withdrew the lids of the remains of previous meals. What was I looking at? I had no idea, but it faintly looked like cashew chicken with broccoli, perhaps some spicy lentils, a collection of vegetables, and a vacuum-sealed bag containing “Meat Pie dated from the early 19th century.
Arranging the concoction onto the dinner plates with great care, I sneaked up on the microwave before it could self-lock its doors and shoveled it into the device, and punched in five minutes on high. I scampered into the next room to await the dinger to go off, fearful that the “concoction” could explode.
Did You Know? Until the icebox (aka proto-refrigerator) became standard in many homes at the turn of the 20th century, “leftovers” didn’t exist. Because there was no way to keep food in the form a freshly prepared meal took at the table, preservation of remaining food was as much a part of the culinary process as preparation. Cookbooks would often follow directions for a meal with instructions for pickling, curing, or salting the remains to prolong the life of all ingredients.
These weren’t leftovers as we think of them today, but the basis of another meal or food item entirely. But the ability to reliably keep things cool changed all that, as people could hang onto last night’s dinner without worrying about immediate spoilage. And so the notion of “leftover”—the remains of a meal that could be kept and consumed in a recognizably similar form later—was born, thanks to this technological innovation of the early 20th century.
The most interesting thing about leftovers, however, is not their invention but shifting attitudes toward them. The luxury of an icebox didn’t mean abundance was taken for granted. In fact, in World War I, eating one’s leftovers was positioned as so patriotic that some celebrated killing house pets rather than recklessly wasting human food on them (in those days, pets ate scraps from human meals). From the wartime years through the intense poverty of the Depression, resourcefulness with this new category of “leftover” proved one’s virtuous frugality even more strongly. A 1917 U.S. Food Administration poster reminded citizens to “serve just enough/use what is left”; while a Good Housekeeping headline from 1930 admonished, “Leftovers Shouldn’t Be Left Over.”
By the 1960s, when most American homes had electricity and refrigeration technology improved, leftovers potentially had a much longer life. Yet as food prices fell, leftovers lost status; throwing them away became a mark of middle-class status.
Eating leftovers, or worse, serving them to a guest, thus made one an object of disdain or ridicule rather than a paragon of civic virtue as in earlier eras. Etiquette columns throughout the 1960s and early 1970s regularly fielded questions about whether it was even acceptable to ask for a “doggy bag” at restaurants, the uncertainty of letter writers revealing this ambivalence about how to act appropriately around leftovers.
Within a few minutes, I heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet and instantly knew either Mary was home, or Scout heard the microwave and was coming to visit.
It was Mary, and as she entered the room, I placed the dishes on the table and poured a glass of wine. The spicy lentils were next out of the microwave. My timing was impeccable; she entered the dining room just as the last item hit the table.
Alexa assisted in setting the mood for the meal by playing Percy Faith in the background. I never knew that leftovers could taste so good! We talked for a while before heading back to the office to watch the news and get ready to crash!
