a wonderlier® bowl of one's own

Forty-five people were expected at my parents' ranchito Saturday for an extended family reunion, so naturally my mother had made enough scalloped potatoes for 100. Actual head count: 30. The low turnout was attributed to a variety of reasons, many of which impugned the character of those not in attendance, but I thought it perfectly acceptable to avoid the California high desert during fire season—with blazes actively flanking my parents' property to the north and the south—on a day that promised, and delivered, a high of 106 degrees. But maybe my cousin was just using her daughter's asthma as an excuse.

My aunt was pouring the leftover scalloped potatoes into a very large ceramic bowl that was long past heaping. She kept pausing to glower at the volume, willing the thick glop of creamy potatoes to somehow settle and make room for more.

“I could take some off your hands,” I suggested. I *heart* my mother's scalloped potatoes, and she only makes them on special occasions, like, to celebrate fire season.

“Oh, good idea,” my mom said, then, assessing the overflow, exclaimed, “And I have just the container!” With that, she hurried out the door of the kitchen and crossed the yard to The Shed™. (No offense to certain readers of this blog who may have quite handsome sheds of their own, sheds that serve their sheddy utilities very well at that, but this is no ordinary shed. Were one to amuse The Shed™—an act I didn't think possible until recently—it wouldn't so much snicker as explode in paroxysms of mirth.) Mom returned with a plastic clamshell container, the kind one would get when ordering, say, a quart of macaroni salad at the grocery store deli counter. These are the sorts of things for which one apparently needs a gigantesque shed.

In light of our utterly bizarre weather of late—humidity in California?—no doubt signaling the death knell of a planet at last defeated by our timeless quest for convenience and transient gratification, my mother's frugality has become something of an asset. Disposability is in the eye of the beholder, and neither squares of aluminum foil nor plastic forks are squandered at the ranchito until they're utterly spent.

During my childhood my family's thrift was a source of embarrassment. Also confusion, as demonstrated by the dreaded shell game "Which margarine container in the refrigerator actually contains margarine?" Ungrateful at the time for the ascetic ideals I would later value, I selfishly yearned for Tupperware.

Tupperware was rarely sold at yard sales, from whence came most of our household goods and clothing. When it did pop up, it was generally warped beyond use—or stinky. And even when perfectly good Tupperware appeared, my mother, for her own arcane reasons, refused to buy it. “You don't know what people have been doing with that,” she fairly spat, though, curiously, she had no compunctions about buying used bed sheets and bath towels. Wanting to understand the distinction I pushed for details, but she couldn't come up with any specific scenarios to illustrate her fears. I knew from experience, though, that urine figured prominently in her distrust of strangers.

I grew up in a part of Orange County that was, during my youth, one part residential to three parts agricultural. And while we loved going to local fruit and vegetable stands for our produce, my mother admonished me never to eat so much as a strawberry until we got home, where it could be properly washed. I thought she was concerned about dirt, something I had eaten a fair amount of in my childhood, until she told me that the immigrants who worked in the fields relieved themselves on the fruit to “get back at whitey.” And lest I think this was aberrant behavior, she also advised me never to send food back at restaurants. (Having worked for a number of years in a restaurant with an all-immigrant kitchen staff, I can say with some certainty that line cooks in general exercise no such urine vendetta against diners, even picky ones, but pissing off waiters is a total crapshoot.)

No one wants Tupperware that's been used to collect or distribute urine—for which vessels suburban needs are myriad. And no one's fool enough to pay retail for new pieces when our lives are so very rich with empty margarine tubs and plastic clamshell deli containers, especially when The Shed™ is there to store an airplane hangar's worth of storage containers—and, good God, how we Americans love storage: One need only observe the checkout aisles at Target, with all those shoppers buying coffin-size plastic bins, to witness our zeal for stuff and the putting away of it.

Logic against such profligacy aside, I grew up with a platonic fetish for genuine Tupperware. (Rubbermaid knockoffs just aren't the same.) But it took many years of adulthood and financial independence before I treated myself to a few pieces. Old notions die hard, and in my world Tupperware was for those with more disposable income—and far less monetary sense.

In short, I was a sitting duck when Phranc came to my workplace to host an afternoon party—working as I do to further the Gay Agenda™, my company's HR goddess thought it the ideal office event—demonstrating the wondrous wares of Earl Tupper. The überbutch lesbian folksinger and latter-day Tupperware Lady has elevated the classic home sales party to the level of performance art—and she brings her guitar to strum out a ditty about the miraculous burping plastics.


Who could resist her androgynous wile? Besides, I gave Phranc absolutely no reason to pee on anything I purchased from her.

And so it is that I finally have Tupperware of my own. The phabulous Phranc sold me two CrystalWave™ soup mugs. The little red nubbins let steam escape when microwaving!


Two sandwich keepers, for the sound use of which I must caution you to buy squarish loaves of bread, not the pillow-size loaves that are increasingly the norm:


Your classic Wonderlier® bowl:


And a neat-o cake decorating set that Tupperware International seems to have discontinued, making it a comparative rarity that just makes it more special.

But we didn't stop there, my partner and I. We've since acquired a round cake taker, which, alarmingly, we bought at a yard sale. (Only a barbarian would pee in a cake taker.)


A Jel-Ring® mold, allowing us to make fabulously retro desserts:


And a snack cup set, for your peanuts and cottage cheese and what have you. These little guys compete with the CrystalWave™ soup mugs for Most-Used Tupperware status:


I still covet a Spin 'N Save™ salad spinner, one of the pricier items in the Tupperware catalog. It would be perfect for rinsing the urine from my farmers' market greens, and if I had one, I would eat salad every single day for the rest of my life.


Can a shed really be so far behind?