I was emptying a plastic tub of green ricotta from the back of my refrigerator into the sink yesterday and was suddenly struck with memories of my mother and her plastic containers. She saved all her ricotta tubs for storage containers. When she died, the freezer was full of them. If you got leftovers from her, they were contained in one. And if she came to visit your house, she would feel no compunction about going through your kitchen cabinets to see if you had any that belonged to her. If she found them, she’d take them home. And each one was marked in black magic marker in such a way that she always knew if that ricotta container was hers. I sometimes wondered if she thought they’d be money in heaven. We threw an entire cabinet’s worth of them out when we cleaned the house after she died. Not for her Tupperware or bought plastic containers. She was of the generation that recycled everything because you just never knew….
Plastic ricotta containers mean mom to me. Is it any wonder that I am so totally food oriented.