"Hot Stuff in the Kitchen"

By Jerry Zezima

Hearst Connecticut Media/Tribune News Service

I’m the very model of the modern modest man. That is why I am somewhat reluctant but still kind of excited to announce that there is a sex scandal going on in my house.

And it involves, of all things, Tupperware.

This is hot news for two reasons:

(a) Now that Thanksgiving is over, and I am more stuffed than the turkey, it is time to use the plastic containers for leftovers, which is what I will be eating until Christmas, after which I will be eating leftovers until Valentine’s Day, after which I will explode like the Hindenburg. Oh, the calamity!

(b) Tupperware profits are even more prodigious these days than leftovers.

According to a recent story by The Associated Press, “Restaurant pain has turned into Tupperware’s gain with millions of people in a pandemic opening cookbooks again and looking for solutions to leftovers. They’ve found it again in Tupperware, suddenly an ‘it brand’ five decades after what seemed to be its glory days.”

I hate to say this, but Tupperware is also having glory nights in my house. This explains why it seems to be reproducing at an alarming rate in one of the kitchen cabinets, where topless containers must be having midnight orgies. Then they give birth to baby containers that must be burped.

I can’t open the cabinet door without being pelted by a torrent of Tupperware. It’s a good thing we don’t keep crockery up there. Or bowling balls.

An inventory revealed these startling figures: 53 containers but only 49 tops. There are an additional seven containers and three tops in the garage, where the excess Tupperware is kept because the cabinet is jammed with the stuff.

Then there is the refrigerator census. There are five containers with leftovers: pork chops, eggplant, meatloaf, scallion patties and pork lo mein.

Tupperware total: 65 containers and 57 tops.

Not all of it is technically Tupperware, but it’s plastic nonetheless, some from the Chinese restaurant down the street, some from a discount store, some from the supermarket and some, presumably, from a midnight invasion by inanimate objects that heard of the nasty shenanigans and wanted to get in on the action.

I often feel like Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate,” where a slimy guy sidles up to him and says, “Plastics. … There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it.”

I’ve thought about it, especially at night, when I can’t get to sleep because I’m wondering what the hell is going on the kitchen cabinet.

If the population explosion continues, we’ll be able to store enough leftovers to feed New Zealand.

My wife, Sue, the Empress of Tupperware, did use a container recently for what I thought was a noble purpose: She kept leftover wine in it. This became necessary because we are the kind of sophisticated people who buy wine in boxes. When I poured a wee too much but couldn’t put it back in the box (never a problem when you buy bottles or simply down the rest of the wine and have to go to bed), Sue poured it in a Tupperware container.

I had the leftover wine the next night. It had a piquant plastic aftertaste that tickled the palate!

I needed fortification when contemplating the mathematical dilemma of having an unequal amount of containers and tops. Or, after an exhaustive search, finding the right container for whatever meal you couldn’t finish but not the corresponding top.

This is another mean trick that Tupperware plays during the night: The containers and tops purposely separate in the cabinet so you have to go through them all before finding the mates. Sometimes it takes so long that the food spoils before it can be refrigerated.

Now we are faced with Thanksgiving leftovers. At least we have enough Tupperware.

Copyright 2020 by Jerry Zezima