Satan's Clingwrap: Things Bizarre
Nearly a year ago, I bought a box of Stretch-tite(r) "Plastic Food Wrap" (which makes me wonder if this is plastic meant to wrap up food, or if it's wrap meant for plastic food. Hard to say.) It was a super deal at Ocean State Job Lot (which I'm a sucker for, not only because they have deals like this, but because you can get Agave nectar, gluten free brownie mix, and more types of earthy-crunchy bizarro foodstuffs than you really would never need).
You just can't beat 250 square feet (mine is half that displayed below) of anything for 2 bucks. So I bought it.
How could I have known I was making a pact with Satan?
Bargain aside, I realized I was in trouble upon engaging with the convoluted packaging. Look at it. Seems simple enough. Plastic food wrap. Sure. But on most boxes of plastic wrap, the blade is on the bottom, more-or-less protected by the flap. Not safe, necessarily--but it's not a santoku knife, and you learn to be careful of it. They're generally not sharper than the foil itself. On this little number, that front flap up there peels up, and gets tucked inside the box--leaving the steel-like blade exposed always, right at the top of the box in exactly the place where you would grab it. The number of times that box has injured me . . .
Then there's the tease: the long opening on the top of the box--which is meant to act sorta like a box of tissues, through which you are meant to leave the end of the wrap out and available, so that you never have to go picking at the role trying to free it while your hands are dripping with the entrails of dinner. Brilliant, right? Ah, but not so--because the wrap never stays out. As soon as you snap it over the deadly blade, it shrinks back on itself, into its tight little cocoon--and next time you have to untuck the flap, pull out of the roll, pick at the end of it, and re-thread the whole thing--that is, if you want to use the blade, which is now hidden away because you untucked the flap. So what seems like convenience is actually just greater inconvenience wrapped in wolf's clothing.
A luxury problem, I admit; but a problem nonetheless.
Fed up with bleeding palms and fighting with the box, I finally pulled the roll out, bent on making a go of ripping off sheets of plastic food wrap sans blade--as I've seen Martha and sundry other TV kitchen personalities do countless times.
Obviously I lack some hidden ripping skill, because in short order I'd somehow mangled and tangled the roll so much that it took my friend ten minutes to surgically pry itself off itself so that I could start using it again--resolutely returning it to its box where I could continue the struggle, as I have this evening--dropping the whole thing on the floor as I wrestled with it.
Because, the thing is: I'm not even halfway through my 250 square feet. I have perhaps 100-150 square feet of devil wrap left to go. I am not a wasteful person, generally. The world does not need 100-150 feet of devil wrap in the dump. I vow to use it all--even if it takes me the next 10 years, which it probably will.
I just hope I'm sane by the time my dance with the devil is over.
Don't you just love a bargain?