Stuff. It’s what’s for dinner.

While I am ruthless when it comes to getting rid of crap like toys and clothes and school papers, I admit that I am a bit of a hoarder when it comes to food. I hate to go grocery shopping so much that I get cereal delivered more frequently than I do shoes. I also love to cook and bake, so I like to make sure I have lots of food on hand should the mood strike me. Now that we’re leaving in about six weeks (OH. MAH. GAH.), I am trying to use up as much of it as I can. This has made for some very interesting dinners. Like ‘macaghetti’.  And ‘cupboard surprise’, where ‘surprise’ equals you-don’t-want-to-know. The kids are loving it, because I’m using up all the white pasta, white rice, and white flour that I normally never use, and topping everything with cheese since I have bags of it in the freezer. I still have a case of tamarind paste that I’ve been hauling around from my failed attempts at making pad thai (Mark Bittman tells me the key is to use GOOD fish sauce, not fish sauce seemingly made from ass crack. Who knew? And how can you tell the difference? And, once you’ve had ass crack fish sauce, you never want to eat pad thai again, so you’re left with a case of unused tamarind paste.).

The other night I was throwing random stuff into a pot and I knocked a glass of the counter, breaking it. I wrapped the glass in a plastic bag and put it in the trash. The garbage bag was pretty heavy, so I had Jack carry it out instead of Henry, whose job it normally is to take out the trash. “Be extra careful, there’s broken glass in there,” I warned. Teenagers being infallible, though, he carelessly grabbed it out of my arms and cut a long scratch into his arm. Grrrreat. Now he looked like he had attempted to slash his wrist. He wore a long-sleeved shirt to school yesterday, but his math teacher saw it anyway and questioned him. Not wanting her to think he was a cutter, he responded, “Oh, well, my mom threw a bag of broken glass in my arms last night.” Yep. And I just had emailed her to ask if she would write a recommendation for his school in Brazil. Anyway, I should probably go make a few mystery tamarind-laced casseroles before Child Protective Services gets here.