Monday: Trash or Treasure
The Gingerbread House
I don’t know why but there is something inherently sad to me about thinking about gingerbread houses. I don’t know if it is because the look god-awful tacky or I can’t imagine putting that much work into something that should be delicious but gets so dirty that it is basically inedible.
I think maybe it is because that my mother had a gingerbread house that someone had made for her and each year she would get out this box where she preserved her little decorated house with plastic wrap and place it on her TV in a place of pride to celebrate the holiday season. After a few years the icing really was smashed and the gumdrops looked like they had fallen from the sky in an attack of the sugar plum faeries and just went splat. I don’t know what crazy relative made this house for her but Mom saved it.
But Mom saved everything. She would wash off aluminum foil and dry it and use it again. She would wash out zip-lock bags and turn them upside down on a bottle and save them to use again. She would wash out plastic tubs that were filled with everything from butter to cottage cheese to sour cream and carefully clean the lids and let them dry so she would be able to use them again. Clothes that were to worn to wear were cut up and used as dust rags. She had a ball made of rubber bands that she had carefully constructed over the years. She did not buy paper towels but dutifully scrubbed and cleaned with old rags that were bleached to a thinness that made them as soft as a baby’s blanket. My Mom didn’t believe in a disposable world but that gingerbread house definitely should have been tossed in the trash or gone to compost heap. Oh, Mom never threw out food either. It was either reheated to mush, frozen and saved for a hungry day or put on the compost heap.
In many ways I admire the world that my mother was trying to save. A world that did not waste and throw away whether it was a piece of tin foil or a person. Maybe we need to rethink our world of throw away everything from plates where we serve our food or a shoe that has a run down heal that you can’t even find someone to repair.
Mom used to say: A woman can throw out more with a teaspoon than a man can bring in with a shovel. In many ways I think she was so correct, we do not destroy our world, our planet, our finances with the big stuff. We do it as we nickle and dime ourselves into poverty and insecurity.
Well I guess I better go put that soup that was left over from supper in those plastic butter tubs and put them in the freezer. They will be delicious when the winter snows keep me from sending Mark out to the grocery.
You think I should put Mom’s Gingerbread House out on the compost pile?
I don’t know why but there is something inherently sad to me about thinking about gingerbread houses. I don’t know if it is because the look god-awful tacky or I can’t imagine putting that much work into something that should be delicious but gets so dirty that it is basically inedible.
I think maybe it is because that my mother had a gingerbread house that someone had made for her and each year she would get out this box where she preserved her little decorated house with plastic wrap and place it on her TV in a place of pride to celebrate the holiday season. After a few years the icing really was smashed and the gumdrops looked like they had fallen from the sky in an attack of the sugar plum faeries and just went splat. I don’t know what crazy relative made this house for her but Mom saved it.
But Mom saved everything. She would wash off aluminum foil and dry it and use it again. She would wash out zip-lock bags and turn them upside down on a bottle and save them to use again. She would wash out plastic tubs that were filled with everything from butter to cottage cheese to sour cream and carefully clean the lids and let them dry so she would be able to use them again. Clothes that were to worn to wear were cut up and used as dust rags. She had a ball made of rubber bands that she had carefully constructed over the years. She did not buy paper towels but dutifully scrubbed and cleaned with old rags that were bleached to a thinness that made them as soft as a baby’s blanket. My Mom didn’t believe in a disposable world but that gingerbread house definitely should have been tossed in the trash or gone to compost heap. Oh, Mom never threw out food either. It was either reheated to mush, frozen and saved for a hungry day or put on the compost heap.
In many ways I admire the world that my mother was trying to save. A world that did not waste and throw away whether it was a piece of tin foil or a person. Maybe we need to rethink our world of throw away everything from plates where we serve our food or a shoe that has a run down heal that you can’t even find someone to repair.
Mom used to say: A woman can throw out more with a teaspoon than a man can bring in with a shovel. In many ways I think she was so correct, we do not destroy our world, our planet, our finances with the big stuff. We do it as we nickle and dime ourselves into poverty and insecurity.
Well I guess I better go put that soup that was left over from supper in those plastic butter tubs and put them in the freezer. They will be delicious when the winter snows keep me from sending Mark out to the grocery.
You think I should put Mom’s Gingerbread House out on the compost pile?
posted by Myriam Maytorena | 7:54 AM
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