Pass the Sodium, Please

Tonight I enjoyed my first M.O.W. Meals on Wheels packages arrive here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Delivered by some really sincere and/or criminal person. I have inside information about M.O.W, because my BFB from my last city was the supervisor for M.O.W. I know that they routinely hire sincere criminal persons because she told me so. I also introduced her to her best delivery man (whom by the way, is the least criminal person you’d ever meet.) If you are hyperventilating at this point, please note that they don’t actually ever step beyond your doorstep.

Here at home in LA, I see the M.O.W detritus pile up every week in the too small space in the ancient fridge while Jack wheels home oversized, greasy bags of NORM’S meals that we don’t want to eat. Admittedly, I’m not a saint. But, I hate seeing food wasted. Week after week I have watched from the hard shoulder as Jack has presided over the fridge and instructed her home care worker to toss out the oldest, untouched servings of sodium-free tray-lets of green beans, muffins and fish sticks. I don’t actually blame her. I am a picky eater from on high. The concept of free radicals permits me to eschew anything that wasn’t just garden picked or newly born.

Food, food waste. I have made some coin as a wine and food writer for publications you might have actually skimmed, so give me the license to talk about our meals. I love food. I don’t have the ancillary trait of loving to prepare it, yet I pour over cookbooks, recipes, restaurant reviews , anything written by M.F.K Fisher and Amanda Hesser and take in all that the Food Channel and Top Chef programs offer.

My house (where my tenant resides) is glorious foodie living. Granite and all stainless steel appliances, counter space for miles. I digress, yes, I digress. The house where we live with Jack doesn’t have that. You might note, if you were paying attention that I have glossed over the past several weeks because it hasn’t been ....fun.

Yet, tonight I felt we had a nexus. I, on occasions have suggested a potluck as an alternative to NORM’S. Hey, how about using what we have in the fridge? Tonight, for the first time Jack suggested that we compose dinner from what we had stored and frozen, thrown in with the M.O.W. I was tired, but I gave the green light. Husband,would you hand me the truffle oil so I can drizzle it over my low sodium potatoes?