THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 10, 1995 TAG: 9503090175
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
When the members of the book group I belong to came by for dinner and discussion last month Geri Burns made an interesting observation.
``That's the good old New England way,'' she said as she bit into a cracker topped with a mixture of left-over chicken, a hefty dab of chutney from a jar with a 1991 expiration date, an equal amount of cheap orange marmalade (to extend the chutney, which, expired or not, is still pretty expensive), some fat free mayonnaise, 10 or 12 almond halves found lurking in a plastic bag in the back of the freezer and a pinch or two of curry powder.
What she was talking about was what one gets to eat at my house.
Leftovers are a way of life around here. Fortunately, Bill likes them. So does Charlie the Lhasa.
And, yes, Geri was right. It does go back to my New England upbringing.
Use it up, wear it out, make it do was my grandmother's corollary to the Golden Rule. Thou shalt not throw anything out was her 11th commandment.
Stale cake? No problem. Just whip up a little lemon sauce, pour it over, let it soak in and you've got a dish fit for a queen. Add a little whipped cream, a couple of dollops of preserves and an ample splash of something with 80 proof written on the label and you've got yourself a trifle that would probably cure the ills of the whole royal family.
There are times, however, when I follow a little too closely my grandmother's admonitions about saving. Even I have to admit that it's hard to find a use for the contents of eight nearly empty bottles of cheap table wine.
My excuse is that I save it to saute seafood in. Right now I have enough to do about 30 pounds of scallops. That's a lot considering that Charlie prefers shrimp and Bill doesn't like scallops at all.
I have a friend whose father had saved every nut, bolt, screw and washer he'd ever removed from anything. Their basement would have put the finest country store to shame.
He, too, was of New England lineage. He was also the last resort of anyone in town who needed a widget for a vacuum cleaner manufactured in 1939.
``Right here,'' he'd say as he led the visitor to the set of shelves marked widgets, then subdivided by year and purpose.
I've always figured that the there's not much reason to save stuff if you can't find it when you need it.
My friend's father found his treasures by cataloging the items and storing them in neat, well marked order.
I have an easier way of doing it.
I just leave my stuff exactly where it is. Forever. Old towels stay in a the linen closet, blankets in the blanket chest. Every pot and pan that I've ever owned is stored in a semi-organized chaos under the sink.
Last week I proved how well my method works.
``Alex gets to start on solid food now,'' Kristin told me on the phone one evening.
``Do you have a starter spoon?'' I asked.
``A what?'' she answered.
``Never mind,'' I told her, ``I'll take care of it.''
I was pretty sure that I knew exactly where the baby spoon that Andy and his brothers had used was stored. Right there in the tray with the everyday stainless where I had left it when Andy graduated from an infant spoon 30-odd years ago.
Not only was the tiny bowled, long handled baby spoon in there, so was the short handled one that the boys had used when they first started feeding themselves and the junior knife, fork and spoon which they had never used at all, favoring the bare finger method for everything from hamburger to oatmeal.
I extracted the silver from the bottom of the tray in which it had made some 17 moves over the years and polished it three or four times to get rid of three decades of tarnish.
Every baby tooth mark was visible. So was every dent and all of the bumps that three active boys managed to add.
I thought about the history of the little silver service. Bill had bought it at the Navy Exchange in Argentia, Newfoundland, the day after I sent him a telegram confirming that our first child was on the way.
I first saw the set the same day Bill first saw me in maternity clothes. That was four months later when the salvage ship on which he was stationed returned from winter ops in the frozen north.
I wrapped the knife, fork and three spoons in tissue and tied them with a blue ribbon and dispatched them to Alex.
I figure he's a lucky kid to benefit from the savings habits of at least four generations of ancestors.
I also figure that he's a lucky kid to have a grandpa who started a family tradition by buying a little set of silverware for a son not yet born 36 years ago. by CNB