Simmer

Is there a fixed amount of time you can have an item of food before you become sentimental and have problems eating it? At some point does your brain switch from "I could use those calories to fuel my cells" to "my comfort with this environment would decrease if this bottle of iced coffee mix wasn't on the bench anymore."

I thought about this concept while preparing dinner tonight. I was heating a lamb Rogan Josh that I cooked, portioned and froze sixteen days ago. My bulk meals don't usually last me this long. This particular portion was the last of the batch, and I had eighteen minutes of microwaving time to reflect on the curious sense of sadness I felt about eating it.

I'm not talking about getting emotional about things like that box of Weet Bix sitting in the back of your pantry, or other long life tins that you can hold onto for six months and then throw into a pasta without a second thought. I think for this affection effect to happen that the item in question needs to be unique in some way, and also be exposed within the environment.

One Christmas I was given a chocolate Santa Claus made by a luxury chocolate manufacturer. It was on Christmas day and I certainly wasn't lacking for sustenance at that point of the afternoon, so I positioned it on my desk among other knick-knacks to eat another time. The next September, when I was moving home, I realised I was still yet to eat it. It seemed that at some point I had unconsciously decided the cost of eating it was too damaging to the tiny contribution the chocolate statue had on the familiarity of my environment. Reflecting further I realised this same phenomena might have been the reason I never baked my Thomas the Tank Engine muffin mix which sat on my desk for about 18 months before I threw it away. I did eat that Santa, it did not taste fresh.

Upon further reflection, I also held onto a six-pack of fat stubbied Cooper's Sparkling for six years after they changed their design to a slimmer bottle. When I drank them in 2009 they also did not taste fresh.

I think environmental familiarity is a major factor in human being's comfort levels. I have seen enough office spazz outs over disappearing mugs to realise this. And also, Luke Walton. There's probably some influence from your food-poisoning-preventing sub-conscious that poses a barrier to eating food your brain recognises as old as well. Whatever timeframe is needed to fall in love with food, it's longer than sixteen days, because my dinner was delicious, and microwaving things for eighteen minutes on the lowest heat makes everything taste fresh.