Another thing I learned from my mother.

At work, one of my favorite things to do is to be in charge of ordering our (daily) catered lunches. I have a full commentary on this task, which someone should remind me to address at a later time. (Small fear that it falls under the category of "Things about which I have a lot to say, but that do not actually interest anyone"...)

I will mention Rules #1 and 2 about ordering lunches, though.

Rule #1: Do not run out of food.

Running out of food is a lunch disaster. I'll be honest, I've under-ordered a few times in my day, and it was not pretty. Most importantly, do NOT run out of food on a Monday, when there are no leftovers from the previous day to reheat and sneak in the spread of food. (Fellow employees, I apologize if you have fallen for this, not because I tricked you, but because you were fool enough to not notice.) This brings me to Rule #2.

Rule #2: Manage leftovers strategically.

More on this later, but in short, I send a weekly email and an occasional Twitter Tweet from @ZanbatoLeftover (thanks for the idea, RJ) about the leftovers, primarily to raise awareness. Throughout the week, I sometimes throw some leftovers into the mix (see above), but occasionally people bring home some of the food during the week for dinner because we all forgot how to cook for ourselves, and mostly people bring things home over the weekend because even if we DO remember how to cook, who wants to do it for three meals for two whole days? Rookie strategy: Try to go all weekend without eating. Better idea: Take home leftovers.

Mom, I bet you're wondering about that title right about now. A few things about this post made me think of my mother. First, it is a very critical skill when managing leftovers to put the food in the correct-sized container. My mother has this skill down better than anyone I know. The last thing you want to do when putting something messy in a Tupperware container is dump everything in the container and realize the container is twice as big as what you needed. Now you are faced with the daunting conundrum: Is it more wasteful to dirty another container that is correctly sized and have to wash the previous one? Or is it worse to take up valuable refrigerator space with a container half-full of air? Critical thinking skills should be used for less avoidable disasters than this.

The other thing that made me think of Mom was tonight's Leftovers dinner: Beef Burgundy. (It was today's lunch, too, but it was so good that I decided to eat it for dinner instead of saving it for Twin Sister Corey when she visits on Sunday, to eat after we see The Hunger Games, when it will probably be raining. I feel a little bit bad actually because it would have been a perfect rainy-day meal. Sorry Corey, I don't regret it. It was delicious.) My mom is a master at Beef Burgundy. I think she'd put Julia Childs to shame. She does that Julia Childs voice pretty well when she's making it, too. And she always says "beef burgundy" in that French way that I will neither attempt to speak nor spell.

I guess there was one other thing that reminded me of Mom. I might have been eating my Beef Burgundy leftovers in bed, and I might have spilled a tiny bit on my white bedspread. I can almost hear it ringing in my head... "I'm not going to say I told you so..."