Clean plate club

For the next 6 months or so, I will be plant sitting for some friends.

How does one plant sit, you may ask?

Simple. Just add water.

Now, these friends are not "old" per say, but they are definitely "older." They are comfortably retired and migrate south every winter, honking all the way there like a flock of Canada geese. I'm serious - the gentleman of this dynamic duo has a long and frightening history of road rage. But, not to worry. He carries one of his many guns with him in the console of the mini van.

Anywho, back to our regularly scheduled program. When I arrived at their northern home to receive my watering instructions (pour water on dirt, not on carpet), I was greeted with the myriad of food that they had cleaned out of their breadboxes/cupboards/pantries/refrigerators/freezers/barns and that they insisted I take home with me. I'm talkin' teas, condiments, salad dressings, cereals, Sam's Club sized bags of dried fruit, and frozen breads which were all meticulously labeled and wrapped in neat aluminum packages. I could go on.

I graciously, gratefully, and confusedly hauled the bounty away with the help of numerous shopping bags and two coolers. The source of my confusion was not just the reasoning behind the random assortment of foiled frozen loaves which I promptly kicked to the curb as soon as I arrived home. I was, and still am, puzzled by this phenomenon that I find to be prevalent among "older" people.

I would qualify it as food hoarding.

You see, Greg and I have this thing called a "grocery budget." This means that each week, I participate in the ancient female tradition of hunting and gathering. I hunt the websites of the supermarkets I deem both worthy of my patronage and accessible to my income, create a menu based on what types of dead animals are on sale, make a shopping list of outstanding ingredients, and gather the items from whichever store had the best deals on chicken carcasses.

By the end of the week, this Old Mother Hubbard's cupboards are bare and a distinct echo-echo-echo may be heard resonating in my fridge. Suffice to say, don't come lookin' for free vittles at the Varney pad come Saturday or Sunday, cause it's slim pickens. Each week we literally eat ourselves out of house and home.

I have yet to solve the mystery. Why do "older" people with no one to feed but themselves have an odd tendency toward stockpiling sustenance? Is this a poverty mentality leftover from the Great Depression? A fear of blizzards? Of nuclear holocaust? Of frogs and locusts? What is the dealio-yo?

I don't get it. So, as for me and my house, you will never see our cupboard jammed to the gills.

Well, except for right now. Three pounds of Craisins anyone?