Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Sharing my secret realm

My freezer is a private shameful realm whose inner reaches not even my closest friends are permitted to enter. I have a recurrent nightmare that I am being robbed by a thief who believes women hide their jewelry in ice cube trays. He'll open the freezer door and before he encounters the ice cube trays(which, for any potential burglars who are reading this, contain no baubles whatever,) he'll confront 240 turkey meatballs, 1 pair of pink cropped pants, 1 plaid cotton jacket, one white eyelet blazer, and a lined L.L. Bean raincoat and 37 irregularly shaped, opaque bags. Terrified that he's broken into the apartment of a deranged drug dealer, he'll flee, and rat me out to Alexis, the doorman. Alexis and I have not been on good terms since I told him politely that every once in a while it might behoove him, as doorman, to open the door. Alexis will tell John, the super,(who also doesn't like me because he thinks I'm a bad tipper) who'll tell the Board, who will serve me with eviction papers. In court, nobody will believe my explanations and Mozart, my cat, and I will be on the street.
As all nightmares do, this one starts with a drop of reality. Actually, more of
waterfall than a drop. Come to think of it, the only fictional elements are the thief and the eviction. You can probably guess why I have 240 turkey meatballs. Right! I was at BJ's. Also thanks to BJ's, I have 8 pounds of whitefish salad in the refrigerator and six 3 pound jars of Ragu spaghetti sauce, two sixteen ounce jars of dijon mustard and a carton of Panko crumbs in my pantry.Although I may not live long enough to finish the meatballs, I don't know when I'll get to BJ's again. If I die with 10 or 20 meatballs left over, so be it and help yourself. If you're pondering about the contents of the opaque bags--ponder no more. They contain either uncooked chicken legs, salmon burgers, lasagna, broccoli, chicken parmagiana, vegetable eggrolls, chana masala or spanikopita. Some of the items owe their presence in my freezer to their having been on a very good sale. Others to the fact that I often bring home half of my restaurant dinner.Unfortunately,no matter the source, I neglected to label the bags with either their contents or vintage, so even were I to open them and identify their contents, they would be more suited as specimens for the Center for Disease Control than for comestibles.
Why the apparel? It's not obvious? Hint: I shop in thrift shops. Still don't get it? Okay, I'll tell you. Just in case there's a hidden bed bug or two on my gently worn cropped pants, jacket, raincoat or blazer, the cold treatment will send them to bedbug heaven. At least that's what the New York Times told me. I know my cropped pants will be bedbug free, but I admit to being a little nervous that the bedbugs will put on the jacket, layer it with the blazer and wrap themselves with the L.L. Bean coat. The L.L. Bean catalog guarantees the coat will stand up to a Maine winter. Let's hope it doesn't stand up to a NYC freezer.