The Tupperware lid was yellow once, or maybe always that color - I couldn't remember anymore. I held it under the faucet and watched the water pool in the crack and spill over my thumb. Behind me the counter had the coffee I'd poured at five and forgotten, and the bag of rice with the red twist-tie still on it, the bag that came home in January when I had a plan, briefly - for grain bowls. The lid didn't hold.
The Cracked Lid Problem
Wednesday the lid snapped open and I looked at it - the farro gone a little grey, the chickpeas sitting there in their cumin smell - and I snapped it shut. Slid it back into the bag. Fourteen dollars downstairs, the place with the chalkboard that always says *locally sourced* in someone's careful handwriting, and I carried the bowl back up in the paper bag they put it in even when you say no bag. I ate it standing, one hand on the keyboard - the other working a plastic fork through something that had edamame and sesame and a sauce I couldn't name, and I finished the whole thing in four minutes without once tasting it. The jar sat in the bag by my chair until Friday.
The farro went into the same jars but this time I made three small bowls first, each one with a different smell - the tahini loosened with lemon until it ran off the spoon, the salsa verde I'd blitzed from a bunch of parsley that was already going soft at the stems, the peanut sauce from a jar I'd had since October and wasn't sure about but used anyway. Chicken pulled the same way over the sink - same podcast, different argument. Three jars on the second shelf, one green, one pale yellow, one the color of a manila envelope - and I stood there looking at them the way I used to look at a full tank of gas - not happy exactly, but something adjacent to it. The label I'd written in marker said *lemon / verde / peanut* and then, underneath, because I'd had a glass of wine by then, a small arrow pointing nowhere. I took a picture - same as always, and for once the light was right.
The Wednesday Collapse
The lid came out with a rubber band coiled inside it and a twist-tie I didn't recognize. I set it on the counter next to the clamshell of arugula - still damp, the bag fogged a little at the top - and the three containers I'd done Sunday, each one with a strip of tape and a date in the same blue marker I keep by the cutting board now. The crack ran the full length of the hinge, yellow plastic gone the color of old newspaper. I held it there a second - not long, then dropped it in the blue bin by the back door where it landed on a cardboard box and made a sound like a period.
The arugula went into the bowl first, still cold from the bag, and I snapped the green lid - the one without a crack - and set it next to my keys so I'd have no choice. Seven-thirty, the office kitchen - the microwave someone had written *PLEASE CLEAN* on in permanent marker sometime before I started working there. I didn't need the microwave. Cold farro, cold chickpeas, the peanut sauce I'd wedged into the front pocket of my bag next to a ChapStick and a receipt from the gas station, and I poured it over the arugula and ate the whole thing at my desk before the nine o'clock, in the ten minutes I had - with the plastic fork I'd put in the bag on Sunday specifically so I wouldn't stand there at the drawer wondering where the forks were. The container sat on my desk the rest of the morning, lid back on, and three different people asked what I'd had, and I said *just some stuff I made*, which was true - and also the most I'd said about lunch in longer than I could remember.
The Thursday jar had the peanut sauce again, and when I unscrewed the lid at my desk the smell hit before I'd even moved the keyboard, warm and close, and the woman two desks over said *that again* without looking up, not mean - just noticing, and I said yeah and ate it anyway, the same chickpeas, the same grey farro, the plastic fork scraping the same circle around the bottom. On the walk home I stopped at the corner store for something - I didn't know what, and stood in front of the glass door of the refrigerator case for longer than made sense, looking at the triangled sandwiches in their plastic shells, the little hummus cups, the string cheese - until the cold coming off the case got to be too much and I left with a sparkling water I didn't want. The salsa verde was still in the front of the fridge, the jar lid gone faintly green at the rim, and I pulled the last two containers - chickpeas, farro, the same - and drizzled it over both of them - both, because Sunday I'd been ambitious and made too much verde and now it needed using. Different smell entirely, bright and a little grassy, and I stood at the counter and ate one of them right there before I'd even taken my coat off. The container sat in the drying rack by seven-fifteen, and I thought about the sandwiches in their plastic shells - and then I stopped thinking about them.
Disclaimer
This article is for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute professional, financial, medical, or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.
