Leftovers.

Ugh.

I tend to leave these plastic containers, Saran-wrapped, and/or tin-foiled-and-shaped-like-a-swan clumps of "I don't want to eat this anymore" to ferment in the rear of the refrigerator until poor Annie is forced to go in wearing Hazmat gear to coerce them out. And I may have discovered why...

Growing up in Chicago - where barbequing is referred to as "cookin' out" - my mother would try to squeeze summer's final bits of sunshine for all she could. So, religiously, every year, on one of the final pleasant summery/autumn days, she'd drag out the Weber grill, fire up some coals, plunk the industrial-sized box of frozen hamburger patties (or, as we say in Chicago, "'amburger paddeez") on the picnic table and begin the afternoon long process of "cookin' out".

Her reasoning - God love her - was that in the dead, frozen solace of a Midwestern winter, myself, my sister, and she would be ecstatic to have a little taste of summer thrown our ways (the "clunk" of a froze patty hitting a plate seconds before a microwave oven's whirring begins to this day haunts me. I can't even watch a hockey puck being dropped on the ice). What you instead win up with is a charcoal flavored rubber disk covered in ketchup and cheese with a side of chips.

Ahhhhh: SUMMER!

I appreciate the effort, I honestly do. It's actually a brilliant plan, if you don't consider the taste of the food you'll be consuming. I'm trying very hard to break this pattern, but it's a conscious as hell effort. Now I know how heroin addicts must feel...minus the withdrawal symptoms, alienation from friends and family, and track marks.