Doh!

Marie Kondo says if you have things that don't bring you pleasure you should get rid of them. And while that might work for old tee shirts, cookware or even your current squeeze, sometimes there's useful life left in that old stuff. For that reason I am loath to just toss items I might have a use for at a later date. Maybe it's an old phone which that I can repurpose as an alarm clock. Or perhaps a used backpack which will keep the miscellaneous stuff in my trunk from rolling around. Go ahead: make fun of the stack of wood remnants that I have in the garage. But when I wanted to convert the firepit into an outdoor coffee table I had the materials at hand. Ask to see it the next time you come over.

The same goes for food. We're not talking leftovers, which are specifically made to be extra. After all, any home cook has learned the value of adding another cup of water to the soup to have another night. Rather, the challenge is what to do with that half-open can or bag that wasn't used in a recipe, and might be reaching its half-life. Sometimes that means googling olives, cheese and artichoke hearts, and just seeing if any of the possibilities are inviting.

Then there's the stuff that's extra by design. Like many, during our enforced lockdown I tried my hand at baking bread. The result was fine, but not stellar. Then we had the good fortune to be invited to a friend's for dinner just as the vaccination dam was breaking. She had also dipped her toe into the boulangerie experience, but had progressed on beyond focaccia to sourdough. Now, THAT was bread! I asked nicely for a lump of the starter to try my hand, which she generously gave me. And off I went.

If you don't know the drill, sourdough is sour because it is basically controlled spoilage. To keep it alive and continually spoiling it has to be carefully fed and watered. Literally. Once a week or so, whether you are using it to bake or not, you have to give it some food and drink and let it grow a bit. If you are baking you take the growing mass and use it in your batter in place of regular yeast to cause your loaf to rise. Get it right, and you'll never buy another loaf from the store again.

However baking bread takes time. And like a dog that has to be walked, whether you bake or not the starter has to be tended to regularly or it will die. Feed it and it grows. But that also means that every week you have more starter than when you began. Even if you only start with a tiny bit, it will double or triple. You learn very quickly that unless you throw out a good bit, you will start to drown in the stuff. 

Which brings us back to hating to throw things away. There are numerous recipes for leftover starter: pancakes, muffins and pretzels. My fav is pizza dough: sourdough pizza has become our new special Friday night treat, and it uses up a good portion of the leftover from that week's feeding. The process checks all the boxes: something good to eat, no waste of food. and an easy to prepare end-of-week meal.

But skip a week and trouble might be brewing. Consider the cautionary report out of New Orleans about a Domino's Pizza restaurant. Seems that in the runup to Hurricane Ida the staff dumped their unused starter/pizza dough in the dumpster out back. All the other organic matter in there plus the heat combined to make that leftover dough one happy camper. The result was a massive blob of dough that bubbled up and out of the dumpster and started to claim the parking lot. 

I'm not saying that my leftover starter will come through the refrigerator door. But now that I have begun down this road, I'm afraid that it's a lifetime commitment to containment. And if not? All I can think of is the scene from "Alien" where the creature bursts from John Hurt's chest. Couldn't happen to my fridge, could it? But I'll bet that's what they said in the Big Easy, too. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford likes to cook with whatever he has. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.