A Holiday Meal Challenge -- Take Only What You Can Humanly Consume

You might think that I've fallen off my rocker with this proposal. Perhaps I have, but I'll stick to my guns.

The notion of reeling in eyes that have a tendency to be historically bigger than our stomachs is almost as insane as failing to indulge in egg nog at least once during the holiday season, and yet our culture has suffered from excess consumption for far too long.

Someone has to step up and say something!

Make no mistake. I don't want to rain on anyone's holiday buffet parade, and I'm the first one to admit that indulging in a little of this and a lot of that is wildly fun. Sometimes far too much fun, but sign me up.

The holidays are all about exploring the pleasure of homemade edibles and sharing quality time with loved ones, so gathering around a huge spread is part of the warm and fuzzy feeling.

By all means, go for it...but how about this for a new green tradition?

Instead of plowing in head-first and leaving a trail of waste behind, how about we all sample much less of each dish than we traditionally would so that we are able to be a member of the clean plate club rather than one of the guests who scrapes off a bunch of perfectly good food from our plate into the closest garbage can.

Whoa.  Now that's some seriously crazy talk...or is it?

Someone toiled in the kitchen a long time to create the eats that we're lucky enough to sample. It's not only insulting to them and ridiculously wasteful to dispose of food that we just can't finish, it also adds up to a sizable financial investment down the drain.

I'm not going to rattle on about our already wildly bloated landfills, but why feed them more food when they have plenty to nosh on already?

And you know what, although it's great that worms are overachieveing black gold makers, let's leave them out of this equation for now.

Even after taking far less at the holiday buffet table than we traditionally would, if we're still faced with leftover food on our plates, then why not scrape it into a reusable container and bring it home?

Leftovers. Hmmmm. Already cooked food. No kitchen cleanup. Healthy, affordable, convenient. What's not to love?

Whatever the mental block is regarding leftovers being undesirable....I'll never "get it". It's food. We're lucky to have it, end of story.

If someone looks at you all cross-eyed and tries to weave some doofusy taboo around your conscientious reusable-container plate-scraping actions, you can react in any one of the following ways:

1) Shrug your shoulders and ignore them. Who really cares what they think, right?

2) Declare that you are doing your part to save Mother Nature and kick up your heels!

3) Smile from ear to ear while explaining that you LOOOOVE leftovers.

4) Ask them where THEIR reusable container is.