I emptied the dishwasher after Thanksgiving and nothing would fit in my Tupperware drawer. I cleaned it out and discovered nearly two-dozen cottage cheese containers, which is odd for a family that rarely eats cottage cheese.
In my quest to organize the Tupperware drawer, it occurred to me what a charmed era I’m living right now with my mothers (my mom and my mother-in-law).
The creatively recycled cottage cheese containers are vehicles for getting the moms’ homemade leftovers from their homes to ours. In the process, the accumulating blue and white plastic has come to represent their undying generosity to their grown (and perhaps free-loading) children.
We have a fully-equipped kitchen and an accommodating dining room, yet, year after year, we put our feet under the tables of our parents’ homes for the holidays.
We bring a meager dish to pass, but for the most part, we eat their food, and they send us home with yummy leftovers — in plastic cottage cheese containers that we don’t have to return.
In a fair and reciprocal exchange, some containers would occasionally leave our home with leftovers in them.
But the arrangement never seems to work that way. They only come in, and never go out.
I should feel guilty, but I don’t.
I just feel really lucky.
I leave the grocery store during the holidays with a bag of hash browns and shredded cheddar for my usual contribution of cheesy potatoes, while others negotiate the aisles with their carts sagging under the weight of groceries for 24 people.
When they share exhausting stories of how many are coming to visit, eat and even stay for the weekend, I just smile and feel … well … lucky.
It’s not that I haven’t offered to host a turkey dinner. That way I could send Mom and everyone else home with a smattering of leftovers in carefully labeled cottage cheese containers.
But as far as I and my sisters are concerned, holiday food just tastes better in Mom’s kitchen.
And the leftovers, even when packaged in the homely cottage cheese containers, taste great the next day or even later that night.
It’s like experiencing a little taste of Mom’s kitchen — and the delicious flavor of the holiday — from underneath an unassuming, white plastic lid.