M@: Cold pizza 1, congealed stew 0 [6.10.11]

Cold pizza 1, congealed stew 0
(Published in the Springville Independent News)

On nights when he ends up working through dinner, my dad will often pop through the front door, give my mom a smooch and head straight to the fridge to rifle through the leftovers. Only rarely will he take time to reheat, even when those leftovers include soup and stew.

Between spoonfuls of congealed grease and rump roast fat, he’ll happily ask about our days and talk about his, and if any among us still happens to be eating his or her own dinner at the time, adios to the appetite of that unfortunate soul.

Now, at this point I could very well indulge myself in a late Father’s Day homily about long hours and ungrateful children and warmed-over stew (note: my mother’s stew is delicious when hot) but I’d rather tackle the weightier issue of the cold pizza phenomenon.

Pizza, a meal meant to be served warm, is heavenly right out of the fridge. In college, in fact, I’d routinely buy a Little Caesar’s Hot-N-Ready pie on Saturday night with the intention of eating a slice or two immediately, then stashing the rest for a (cold) Sunday afternoon meal.

So why the gross-out with cold stew? My sister and I even use it as a litmus test for aging: after scooping cold soup out of a can and into a bowl, if you reuse that spoon after your soup’s hot, or — I hate even typing it — lick the cold globs of soup off that spoon, you are almost certainly old. If you disgustedly toss spoon A into the sink and grab spoon B for your meal, your best years are still ahead of you.

And what about Chinese food? The refrigerated contents of your average Styrofoam take-out box are very stew-like, if not worse, in gross-out potential — indeterminate chunks of meat, sauce-turned-slime, a 1-to-4 ratio of veggies you know by name versus veggies that might have been harvested on Mars — yet everyone I know loves cold Chinese leftovers.

Thanksgiving leftovers? All OK served cold. Taco salad? Iffy, but not horrible, in a pinch. Beef stroganoff? Not OK. SpaghettiOs? Punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if consumed cold in a public place.

I’ll be darned if I can find any common determining factor between the “OK” and “Not OK” columns, but like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous threshold for obscenity: “I know it when I see it.”