Upside down bottles and a quarter inch of salsa

The men in my family are doing their level best to fight global warming by never producing any garbage. In plain American English, this means THEY NEVER THROW ANYTHING OUT! The Carson Law of Matter states that, “Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can be stored.

My husband, God love ’im, is always determined to get his money’s worth from shampoo bottles, hand lotions, ketchup bottles, salad dressings and mustards, etc. So if you were to come to my house and look in my refrigerator on any given day, you would likely find at least three bottles of condiments upside down in the door of the fridge. They have to be kept in the door because they are too skinny headed to stand upside down on a regular shelf. Sometimes, when the door gets pulled open a little too quickly and one of these bottles will throw themselves out of their perch, landing right side up and shaking all the good stuff back down to the bottom. This wouldn’t be such a bad deal, if they ever actually got pulled out of there and used up down to the last expensive drop, but somehow, it’s too much trouble to deal with squeezing that final taste out of the bottle and a new one gets opened while the old one continues its upside down vigil in the door of the fridge.
The upside down shampoo bottle in the shower is always leaping from its station and bouncing around in the shower stall. Usually this happens during my shower, right after I’ve poured a portion of my shampoo onto my hand, so I have to chase the bouncing near-empty bottle around with one hand, while trying to avoid letting the water hit my other hand and wash away my shampoo.

My son likes to try new salsas; different brands, new flavors, varying levels of fire and so on. So he brings home a new jar about once a week. Somehow this jar gets used up down to the final quarter inch and then it is abandoned, ousted by the new flavor of the week.

Well about a week ago I decided to make it my mission to force them to use up the last of the upside down condiments. I found no fewer than 8 jars of salsa with one quarter inch left in it. This was going to call for more than a batch of taco meat and a can of refrieds. I made large salads and I took every upside down bottle of dressing and put it on the table, inside a glass so it wouldn’t tip over. I boiled some macaroni. I stirred some taco meat and cheese into the macaroni and started pouring in the salsas. Added a little sour cream just for good measure and put it in a hot oven to warm it all up. I might have thrown in some shampoo and hand lotion, but I wasn’t alone in the kitchen. I held no hope whatsoever that it was going to be very tasty, but there was suddenly a lot more room the fridge, so it was going to be worth it, even if the casserole ended up in the garbage.

I nearly fell out of my chair when my son said, “That’s the best casserole I’ve ever tasted!”

Go figger.