When I grew up my siblings and I were given two bits of motivation regarding the importance of finishing everything on our dinner plate. The first was that there’d be no dessert for anyone unable or unwilling to finish their beets, cabbage, or Brussels sprouts. The other: the intimation that failing to eat every morsel of food would somehow lead to some innocent child in China, India or Africa expiring due to starvation, and how would we like having that on our conscience?
Recently I decided to clean out the breadbox in my kitchen, a chore I faithfully perform, whether it needs it or not, every four years or so. Under all the crumbs, old twist ties, and an envelope of wax bean seeds were a variety of random papers which had inexplicably found their way to the breadbox’s bottom, including some old take-out menus, the warranty from the microwave I purchased ten years ago, and a cellophane-like paper with the words “Sushi Nori” printed on the front and “Best before July 21, 2022” on the back.
Upon closer inspection that cellophane was actually a slender package of roasted seaweed sheets which are used for constructing one’s own sushi rolls. I myself have never built a sushi roll, but apparently one of my children did, or at least had planned on trying to do so prior to moving out several years ago.
Assuming sushi wrapping is itself edible, I ripped off a postage-stamp-sized piece of a green sheet and tentatively began nibbling at it. It took some time, but with a sense of purpose and determination I managed to swallow it, even though it tasted like a seaweedy wad of paper.
At that point my “waste not, want not” DNA involuntarily kicked in. Not wishing to feel guilt over causing a starving child on another continent to expire due to my cavalier attitude about food, I dutifully folded up the remaining 55 square inches of the sheet, stuck it between my teeth, and resolutely began chomping.
Consuming four-year-old sushi wrap is harder than it sounds. For a while it seemed I had literally bitten off more than I could chew, but despite thoughts of headlines reading ‘Local Man Succumbs to Organic Seaweed,” I steadfastly kept munching. Finally, after several tense moments I was able to choke down the entire vile green mass.
My ordeal wasn’t over, though. Hurrying to the bathroom for an aftertaste- eliminating drink of water, what I saw reflected in the mirror was a mouth that would have embarrassed even the most dental-hygiene-averse tobacco-chewing hillbilly. It looked like I’d been subsisting solely on spinach, parsley and kale for the previous decade. Also, due to the surprising adhesive qualities of expired seaweed, the looming chore of restoring my smile seemed like a Herculean task that would require a Brillo pad and/or a sandblaster. However, since I wanted to retain the enamel on my remaining teeth, I spent the next half-hour vigorously employing an industrial-strength toothbrush and several yards of dental floss. When I finished the brush looked like it had been used to clean a toilet rather than the inside of a person’s mouth.
But one “waste not, want not” problem remained: what to do with the remaining sheets of four-year-old Sushi Nori?
Thankfully, my subsequent research indicated that seaweed isn’t just biodegradable; it also makes excellent fertilizer. I buried those three sheets in my compost pile near the spot where I plan on interring the bean seeds next spring. With luck, something will come up that I can send to an undernourished child in China, India, or Africa.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
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