Or, once again I am my mother’s daughter
Sadly, I am not the Tupperware Ninja, see end of post for more on this picture.
photo credit: svensonsan
Today was my five year old’s last day of preK and to celebrate his school held a picnic for the families. We were to bring our own lunches and the school provided lemonade and dessert. I knew my kids would be too excited to eat much and they aren’t big on sandwiches anyway, so I decided to bring some cheese cubes, crackers and fresh fruit.
Okay, let’s back up a bit, I was going to bring homemade kim bap so as to increase my mom status but that just wasn’t happening today so I had to make due with blackberries and pineapple to send the message that I am a good mom that cares about good nutrition. (bold mine, for emphasis because it’s really important that you get that considering I’ve been known to bread and deep fry McDonald’s cheeseburgers.)
So, I’m rinsing the berries, cutting the pineapple and then had to dig through my container cabinet to find suitable containers, with matching lids, to bring to such an important event as a kindergarten picnic. I have a lot of containers, but obviously one can’t bring the ones that are red with tomato sauce, have white, rough bits (does that mean the carcinogens were released?), have previously contained kimchi or very obviously once held nitrate-laden inexpensive prepackaged deli meat.
Your containers say a lot about you, just like your plastic bags, and it’s important that you realize this and act accordingly.
When my mom was here in August, we went to the Winchester Farmer’s Market, source of many of my grody foods – by the way, total tangent but they have banned photography in the store. That is so not my fault, I was discreet, y’all - and there’s a little section of the store devoted to household goods from Korea. You have your serving platters and training chopsticks and those rough sloughing towels and containers. Lots and lots of containers.
And ohmahnah my mother went nuts! Nuts, I tell you. Obviously not giddy jump up and down screeching nuts as is my wont to do but she was pretty dang pleased to see all of these containers at such a reasonable price. She told me the ones with the rectangular lids with the fold down wings to fasten them shut were very popular in Korea as were the glass ones with the rubber seals in the lids but she prefers the plastic for practical reasons although now that I realize that those white patches are probably the carcinogens bubbling free, I think I want to get glass ones.
So keep in mind, my mom lives overseas and had to fly back home but she still bought about a dozen containers, in various sizes so as to facilitate packing them inside each other to save space.
And you know why? Because having an ample supply of containers is just that important. I am not mocking. I am telling you this because I care about you and want you to live the best life possible.
Then a few months later, after my mom discovered Ebay (which has been awesome for me because I never know what she’ll bid on and have sent to me) I get this box in the mail completely filled with a bunch of her favored style of container. Only they are red and have Christmas trees subtly embossed on the plastic, but still, awesome containers. I use them to send my husband’s lunch to work so that his bosses will appreciate that we have a taste for the finer things in life and they should try to accommodate that with raises and bonuses. You can’t even hardly see the Christmas trees unless you’re really looking closely.
But that’s my husband’s career and the picnic was an opportunity for mom status so the red tupperware was out and I finally decided to use the new set of square gladware that I’d purchased a month previously and were still looking new as I’d had the forethought to keep them on dry sandwich duty only.
And you know what? The people, they were impressed by the loving way in which I packed nearly 2 pounds of fresh fruit (not organic, but they couldn’t tell that) which everyone came by to admire as our children camped out by the sno cone machine and ran around in hyper little high fructose corn syrup and red dye 40 inspired circles all around us.
Oh, and this is how you can tell I’m not just some pretentious twit, I packed the containers of fruit into a Sugar Smacks print reusable grocery bag that I got for free buying two boxes of Mini Wheats. I like to mix it up, zig when they think I’m going to zag. Never let them think they have your number!
By the way, the picture at the top of the post was found on Flickr doing a creative commons search on Tupperware. I followed the link under the photo to this blog post.. It’s in German, but Google translate will do an absolutely hilarious job translating it for you:
The insanely popular and seemingly unbeatable PENG Bowl ®, which I just had to buy. Resourceful American housewives have the bowl PENG baptized, since they allegedly beat Peng when you go to the dough in the bowl packed with lid.
My German is not the best, but it does seem like a very funny post in the original and I think I would like this guy to be my new German friend.
