Leftovers – Congealed Thoughts from the Back of the Fridge

I have an uneasy relationship with mayonnaise.

It really began when I was five. Having seen a commercial for Pledge, that lemon-and-insecticide scented, ozone-imploding furniture polish, wherein some mindless girlchild haplessly flopped an open-faced peanut-butter and mayonnaise sandwich onto her mother’s fine walnut coffee table (“Uh, oh, Mommy!” *beatific smile*). Being five, and apparently ridiculously impressionable, I completely lost the plot, and decided I needed a peanut-butter and mayonnaise sandwich, stat.

“You have to eat it all,” my mother warned me. “We’re not wasting food on a whim, here.”

“I’ll eat it,” I said, and indeed, I took a hefty bite when she gave it to me. My arteries curled up and whimpered. “See? It’s good,” I assured her, and forced it down.

Being not only ridiculously impressionable, but determinedly basalt-headed, I actually asked her for another one. I don’t know how I kept it down.

The Thanksgiving I was nine, my parents’ friends, Cheryl and Bob, invited us to a mini-feast the day before the big day. Cheryl was from BAHSton, and my California-grown ears thought her wide open vowels and nasal consonants were the epitome of class and elegance. I compared her tall-twig runway-polished looks rather unfavorably to my own mother’s familiar, comfortable unmade-up appearance, until Cheryl slid a cut-crystal bowl in front of me.

“It’s ambrosia salad,” she told us all proudly, fluttering her fake lashes. “My family has this every year.”

My toes curled, and inside I made hasty apologies to dear old Mom. At least she knew better than to make anything that looked like this!

I know now that ambrosia salad is a Southern thing, and was meant to be a treat for my parents, who were born in the Southern part of the U.S. The salad is meant to be a light, bright palate cleanser. It’s made up of pineapple, coconut, navel oranges, a banana and sometimes maraschino cherries. Dear, classy Cheryl felt it necessary to go one step beyond this, and add tiny pastel marshmallows, mayonnaise and Cool Whip to create an undignified, unpalatable mess.

I remember feeling my face go hot, and staring at the dainty silver spoon next to my bowl. I remember stirring the creamy glop around with it, pretending to eat. I remember my father glaring at me the length of the table. I lifted the spoon and parted reluctant lips, knowing I was in for a hiding later on if I did not. I didn’t even bother to chew.

When my bowl was empty, I left the table. I was probably coming down with the ‘flu already — and once I ate that ambrosia salad, and was halfway to the toilet, I parted company with my entire meal. My father was furious, and harangued all the way home, but I think Mom was relieved we left so soon. I was put to bed shaking and hallucinating mice running around my room. It was just the ‘flu, but for me, that salad — that sickness — was inextricably linked with mayonnaise. It was one more strike against the evil oil-and-egg suspension.

UGH. Mayonnaise. It shrivels my soul to this day.*

In college, I lived in the Napa Valley, land of Michael Chiarello. Living in the Foodie’s Paradise, we all had to eat aioli, the quintessential must-have fresh garlicky salad dressing that bears a queasy-making relation to mayo. I sought refuge in vinaigrettes and did just fine, as the Valley has amazing olive oils and vinegars. We made our own mayo and aioli, and I admit anything we made at home tasted far better than store bought, but the eggs still gave me trouble, until I discovered that we could always use silken tofu as a base. That changed everything, and I became a creamy dressing aficionado.

Fast forward quite a few years to shopping in the UK… We’ve found that there are many dressings and vinaigrettes on the market, for when we’re too lazy to make our own, but along the way, as usual, we’ve discovered some things we’ve never heard of… Pray tell, if any of you know: What is salad cream? Dear friends, I have a horrible suspicion that it has something to do with ambrosia salad…

We have ONE clock in our house, a faux-Rococo 1950’s rose and gilt monstrosity complete with roman numerals that I picked up from the trash years ago. It’s so tacky it’s kind of neat, and once I refreshed the gold paint and livened up the color on the roses, I really liked it. It adds its own touch of quirky whimsy to whatever room it graces. It’s a great little clock — but it’s only ONE clock, and even in a flat of this size, it’s kind of a pain. The stove has no clock, nor does the microwave, so when we unpacked our painted porcelain mantle clock and found that the battery had given out during its voyage, we immediately started poking around in local shops, searching for a replacement.

There is a little shop on the way home from the University called The ClanStore. (And every time I see it, I think of hoods made of sheets. I assume it’s named for something to do with kilts…) It’s a crowded little shop filled with odds and ends from all over, and the proprietor promises that if he doesn’t have the Dr. Who memorabilia, mop, broom, plastic coffee mug, toy, t-shirt or electric fan that you’re looking for, he can get it. It’s an adventure of sorts to go into the shop, because the whole thing is the size of our front hall, and is crammed ceiling high with shelves of odds and ends, and only the proprietor knows where the bodies are buried. Patrons enter one at a time, and it’s not unusual to see a few standing on the sidewalk, waiting their turn. The owner is a busy man, and it makes him feel a bit self-important. He’s expansively promised Mac whatever he’s asked for, and hasn’t come up with most of it yet, including the battery. We’ve been looking for a replacement battery now for months.

We have, of course, looked elsewhere. Supermarkets carry the most routinely used battery sizes, as do many other stores, but the one we needed is an odd size, and we couldn’t seem to track it down. We were afraid that we would have to have friends send one from the U.S. “This is ridiculous,” I thought to myself. “Batteries are batteries. They’ve got to be around somewhere.” And so, I did my usual vague and random Google search… and with a little digging, found them.

Apparently the batteries for our mantle clock are the same size of the batteries that power most Japanese-manufactured…”marital aides” (to use the very Victorian term). There may be no other use for them in our neck of the woods, therefore it may be that only very specific shops carry them, shops into which it never occurred to us to look…

Monday we await the delivery — in discreet brown paper packaging, of course — of one nickel-metal hydride Size N battery… Sounds sexy, doesn’t it?

All right. No more playing around. Semester starts tomorrow. *Sigh* To all of you plugging away at those first few days of resolutions and regulations, courage. Only twenty-four days left ’til you can give it all up as a bad idea.

*(If it helps any of you purists out there, I don’t like catsup/ketchup or any variation of same either.)

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