Judge John Hodgman - Hodgman's Desiccation Declaration

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

It's time to clear the docket! With the holiday season in full swing, we are tackling LEFTOVERS. What should one do with leftover Halloween candy? Are pumpkins acceptable to use as decor after Halloween? How does Tom Perrotta, the writer of the novel THE LEFTOVERS, enjoy his holiday leftovers? All this plus office breakfast burrito leftover policy, freezer technique, and much more!

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne, and we're in chambers this week clearing the docket. With me, as always, is the green bean casserole of judges, Judge John Hodgman. How about sauteed green beans? That's my preference. Boy, oh boy, would I ever like to take a dip in some giant tub of Lipton onion soup mix. Yeah, let's get with that cream of mushroom, baby. Make a dip in some giant tub of Lipton onion soup mix. Yeah. Let's get with that cream of mushroom, baby. That's that secret ingredient to the green bean casserole, isn't it? Let me double check that.

I need to make sure. Green bean cass. It fills in the roll. It's an American baked dish consisting primarily of green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and French fried onions. I had it all wrong. It was invented by Campbell Soup. We're coastal elitists. We don't know what's in that. I've had many a green bean casserole and I love it. I guess I would bathe in cream of mushroom soup. Campbell's brand, of course.

But as far as that Lipton onion soup mix, snort it. Oh yeah. Love it. Hey, kids out there who might be listening, I don't care what time of year it is, don't take a bath in mushroom soup and definitely don't snort any powdered soup. Yeah, take a bath in treasure and snort pixie sticks. There you go. That said, it is the time of occasional overindulgence as we check our watches. It's November o'clock. We're really coming right up on that unnameable holiday that not only do I always promise to refuse to celebrate, this year I'm really refusing. I'm not going to do it. Wow. You mean the wonderful holiday that celebrates love and togetherness and

the gift of warm food shared with people you love? Oh, we'll have all of that, but we're going to a restaurant. Oh, okay. We're going to go to a restaurant. We're going to reduce the stress, you know? Anytime you serve at home, you know what that is? It's a stress-trent. Goodbye forever. Yeah, we're going to go to a restaurant. We're going to have a wonderful time.

We're going to be thankful as we try to be on every day. And, of course, we're going to be very generous in our tips but in the meantime we are entering that season where there's often some leftover food some leftover latkes or some leftover stuffing or some leftover tomato soup gelatinized salad all the people that everyone enjoys that people fight for in that family. Remember that family that has that tomato soup jello salad? And they're always fighting to make sandwiches out of it, spread it on white bread. America is a land of wonders, as Chris Jeff once said.

We put out a call for leftovers. Whatever that food is that's left over in the back of your fridge that's been hiding there forever. Whatever that food is that's left over in the back of your fridge that's been hiding there forever. We also put out a call for disputes regarding the novel, The Leftovers, that was made into the HBO TV show, The Leftovers. The novel, of course, was written by Tom Parada, who was an old writing teacher of mine and still a friend. But none of you wrote in on the subject of The Leftovers by Tom Parada. So that meant I had to go to Tom myself and ask him about his favorite leftovers. And this is what the novelist Tom Parada said when I asked him about his novel, The Leftovers, and his favorite leftover. Hey, John. So The Leftovers is a serious novel about

grief and collective derangement. So I really don't know why you're bothering me with this. But that said, I highly recommend stuffing on a turkey sandwich. There's something about that bread on bread that really does it for me. Didn't even say goodbye. Yeah. Later, chumps. Just cut it off there. And you know what?

Have fun not being acclaimed novelists. No, I don't blame Tom Parada for hanging up on me in his voice memo. First of all, that takes a lot of skill. I wasn't even on the phone with him. Yeah. I just recorded that. And also, I was really bothering him with something really dumb. That said, Tom Parada is a really, really wonderful guy, great writer.

Check out his new novel, Tracy Flick Can't Win, which is a sequel to his novel, Election, wherever you get your books. Thank you, Tom. I'm sorry about that. But I do like stuffing on a turkey sandwich. That's true. But Jesse, we're not at that unnameable holiday yet. In fact, we just passed a wonderful holiday. And I can see in the televisual conference, you're wearing a beautiful bright orange jack-o'-lantern-y sweater that reminds me of Halloween. That's true. And in our last docket, we covered some Halloween disputes. And there are now some leftovers. And specifically, they are leftovers about Halloween leftovers. All right.

So leftover Halloween disputes about Halloween leftovers. Perfect. Here's something from Rita. My dad and I have leftover candy from Halloween. A lot of it is lollipops. First of all, I just want to highlight here. I don't know. The idea that this candy belongs to Rita and her dad. My dad and I have it.

I don't know Rita's age. Maybe this is more suitable for a juvenile court docket. Either they went into the CVS and went halfsies on a bag of fun size or the two of them went trick or treating together with an agreement to split the proceeds. I don't know why it's so unusual for a daughter and a father to co-own a bag of lollipops. You know, sometimes, you know what it could be? It could be, you know, Rita could be getting her start in the world. She's going out to the big city. She just got out of college.

And, you know, in New York City, you can't afford to just buy a bag of lollipops. Sometimes you have to get your parent to co-sign for you. Yeah. Since the best buy date on the bag of candy said it was good until 2024, I say we should save them for next year's Halloween. My dad says that's gross. The candy will go bad by next Halloween and we should throw it away and buy new candy for the trick-or-treaters next year. I agree old chocolate shouldn't be given out, but can the same be said for lollipops? P.S. I have had Zagnut bars.

They are wonderful. Well, obviously I find in Rita's favor simply because Rita loves Zagnut bars. The only candy that I really, well, I do like a Reese's peanut butter cup. And we gave a lot of those away on Halloween. Jesse and Jennifer, what's the report? What was your trick-or-treating report? Did you have any young ghouls and goblins come by your house and take some candy away from you or what? I don't know if I did because my husband and I both went out trick-or-treating with our son. Oh, I thought you were going to say you went to a restaurant for Halloween.

I skipped it and went to a restaurant. Wow, who who needs all the hassle i don't need the stress um no so we were out trick-or-treating with our son came home and i had so much candy prepped i had uh non-candy prepped for kids who don't want the candy yeah and we had one trick-or-treater come and i wish i gave her more candy because we still have it. Wait, were you there to give it out or did you just leave a bowl? Oh, yeah, yeah. Like while we were home, we had one trick-or-treater. Right.

And her mom was like, it's late. I wasn't sure. And I was like, our light is on. I'm so happy you're here. Yeah. But by the way, those non-candy items that you put out, were they erasers? Some of them were erasers. Some of them were erasers some of them were stickers some of them were temporary tattoos i just want to shout out to renee who wrote in for our halloween docket saying that they preferred to put out erasers and stationary products for kids and i kind of raked renee over over the

candy coals a little bit but they but they were just candy coals. They weren't real coals. And I also apologize too, because a number of people wrote in, including a listener named Abby, who was like, yeah, it's good to put out non-candy items because there are kids who might have allergies or diabetes or whatever. And Abby puts out glow necklaces and Play-Doh and all the kids love it. They always come back. And Abby turned me on to this thing, the teal pumpkin. Do you know about the teal pumpkin? Yes. I had no idea why I was seeing teal pumpkins all over my consumer value stores. That's

CVS to you and me. What is a teal pumpkin? A teal pumpkin is an artificial pumpkin and it's teal colored. And people put that out in front of their house to signal that they have non-food slash candy treats for trick-or-treaters who have allergies or other reasons for choosing non-candy treats. Yeah. So it's like, you know, that classic plastic orange pumpkin that you might put candy in or, you know, it's a teal colored one. It's an option. We have one and it wasn't purposefully to signal the trick or treaters. My son and I were at Target one day and he saw it on the shelf and went, I want a blue pumpkin. Yeah. And so we got it for him and he sleeps with it in his bed.

Yes. It's not a real pumpkin painted blue. No, no, no, no. It's an artificial pumpkin. Teal is an unusual color for Halloween. It does not necessarily go with the color scheme. Although I guess the Florida Marlins uniforms would argue otherwise. I mean, maybe they just choose it to not blend in with the

regular autumnal color scheme to stand out and signal. If I got a treat out of a teal pumpkin and it wasn't a tropical fish, I would be disappointed. Right. Just fill it up with betta fish. Exactly. Have any trick-or-treaters come to your house, Jesse Thorne? You know, we went trick-or-treating in a different neighborhood. Last year was our first year in the neighborhood in which I live. And we did go trick-or-treating around our neighborhood and found a few houses that had candy. I mean, we probably did six blocks and found eight houses. It was a lot of work. And so we went to Highland Park, an adjacent neighborhood, and went to a Halloween-y set of streets. Sure. Had a nice time. At our house, we put out one of those plastic pumpkins full of fruit snacks and we put it behind our gate so you could

reach through to grab some. But, you know, we didn't want a surly teen to take the whole thing. And I did not notice any gone. Or a raccoon. Yeah. I mean, the gate does a great job of keeping raccoons out. Raccoons, there's nothing raccoons respect like iron bars that are five inches apart. Right. That would only keep raccoons away because they would think it's not worth the challenge. Yeah. They're like, who are you kidding? Come on, I can do all kinds of things with these little thumbs. You want me to stoop to that? Don't insult me. That's where coons are offended by gates. Yeah. He's like, talk to me when you've got a fish skeleton with only the head on.

We used to have a lot of kids come by because there used to be a lot of kids in the building. And we live in an apartment building. And this year, I mean, all the kids have grown up. And all the kids, because it was on a school night, all the kids were out trick-or-treating at like 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I had barely filled my orange, but now I realize it should have been not merely orange pumpkin, but also like orange with flashing red alert allergen lights on it. because it was basically full of only Reese's Cups. It was just that peanut butter powder with a scoop. You scoop it into your hand. Judge Hodgman, what about these lollipops? Oh, right.

I didn't put any lollipops in my bucket because I don't care for a lolly. Too much work. But that's not the question. Do they go bad? Tell you what, I actually did a little bit of research on this because I was curious. I consulted a lot of websites. There were a lot of like credible websites, NPR, USA Today, that had all done stories on what candies go bad after Halloween.

But the one I like the best is this website I'd never heard of called Bargain Boxed. I have no idea who they are. they could be a bunch of liars but their article at least was called do dumb dumb suckers go bad that's a great sentence right there do dumb dumb suckers go bad and the answer is dumb dumb suckers don't go bad pretty much hard candies pretty much hang in there for a long time they're like uh bottles of grain alcohol. They really don't, they really don't go bad. They will stay pretty much the same so long as they are not exposed to air or moisture and they will last a long time into 2024 for sure. But if they are exposed to air and moisture, they can get stale or grainy, or as the article entitled, do dumb, dumb suckers

go bad point out, you want to check for mold after a while. You don't want to give any kids some moldy lollipops. So, you know, read is right on that one. But I got to go against read a little bit like old chocolate also hangs in there to my surprise, according to some of these websites. Pretty much consensus is if it's milk chocolate and it's unopened, you got about six months to eat it. But if it's unopened, like about six months to eat it but if it's unopened like dark chocolate that you keep in a cool dark place you got two years which would be a pretty

hot thing to do in halloween two years ago to be handing out frozen blocks of bittersweet uh chocolate bars just passing out baking chocolate yeah that right. That you've had in the freezer, frozen solid. If you handed out frozen blocks of baking chocolate and Zagnuts only, you would get a reputation on your block, that's for sure. But here's my thought. Why? Why hold on to chocolate or candy? I don't care for the candy.

You can throw those lollipops in the sea. Throw them in a sea of mushroom soup for all I care. I don't want to ever have them. But I do actually like chocolate. I like darker chocolate too. The stuff that lasts a long time. I'll enjoy it. But I want to enjoy it as soon as possible. I don't want to wait around for two years for it. I think like a lot of people, the best chocolate is the chocolate you eat right away once you get it. Fresh as can be. Consider the fact that you are talking about saving a $4 bag of lollipops for a year to save that $4 at the end of a year. And think of what that square foot of your house costs you over the course of a year.

house costs you over the course of a year. I know that people have giant houses in other parts of the United States, but it still strikes me as penny wise and pound foolish. That's right. The advice of a menacing clown. Don't take that advice. I'll tell you, John, what we did with our leftover fruit snacks, because we had a lot of leftover fruit snacks. Yeah. My two younger kids and I have an outing on Friday afternoons called Roofers Adventure Club. And we like to, because they're the goofy roofers, shout out to all the Birthday Boys fans out there. And we will go, you know, to the Children's Museum or whatever. And we'll usually try and do one other little activity.

And the week after Halloween, we took those individual bags of fruit snacks and sort of bagged them up in, you know, eight or ten groups of six or eight, something like that. And brought them down to the community food bank. And there's a grocery store next to there. We went, bought some other fresh food and stocked the shelves outside our local weird anarchist collective rundown Victorian home on Broadway in Lincoln Heights here in Los Angeles. There's a big community food bank area and some folks were glad to have a snack for their afternoon or their kid's lunch or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I think that that's right. I mean, these are treats, whether it be lollipops or chocolates or Reese's cups or Whoppers, they're treats. What's the point of tricking everybody

by keeping them for a year and then handing them out later? They're treats. What's the point of tricking everybody by keeping them for a year and then handing them out later? They're treats that should be enjoyed as soon as possible. They're not everyday foods. They're not all the time foods. They're treats. So you should keep a few in your house for you and your dad to have as a treat throughout the year. And then you should figure out some way to treat other people. People who maybe need a little treat in their life with these lollipops. Like keep them by the door for when the UPS person comes by or the FedEx person says, do you want a lollipop? Find a way to distribute these treats through your community, through your neighborhood.

Maybe there's someone who needs a little extra lollipop in their life. You can figure it out. Don't hide your lollies under a bushel. Here's something from Vanessa. I say as long as they aren't carved, pumpkins are a seasonal gourd and can remain on the porch through Thanksgiving. My husband says they should go to the compost after Halloween. He says they'll rot on the porch and cause a big mess. Are pumpkins strictly a Halloween decoration or can they remain the whole autumnal season?

Well, Vanessa, that's two different questions. Question one is, are they strictly a Halloween decoration? And question two is, are they going to rot and stink up my porch? As for question two, I'll answer that first. I went to some websites again. This time I went to a good website called nPR.org where their gourd desk covered how long do Halloween pumpkins last for a post Halloween article from a couple of years ago. I don't like the fact that it was called how long does a pumpkin last? This article should have been called how long can these punks keep it up?

Better title for it. You should let Bargain Basement or whatever that website is name all your stuff. You dumb, dumb suckers. Let someone else punch it up for you next time NPR. you should let bargain basement or whatever that website is name all your stuff you dumb dumb suckers let someone else punch it up for you next time npr anyway 8 to 12 weeks is the answer 8 to 12 weeks we still got a uncarved as long as it's uncarved if it's carved up get it out of there five days at the most it's going to go from looking like fun scary to eerie to nightmare inducing to you'll never traumatic after a while. It looks terrible and smells bad and isn't good. But an uncarved pumpkin, you can keep that around for eight to 12 weeks.

Carved pumpkins avoid any decoration that requires power washing. You know something I learned? Because I was thinking we had this uncarved pumpkin because we carved one and we didn't carve the other. I don't know why. Just to pit them against each other in some weird, sick way? I don't know. Yeah. One of them got more attention, but the other one lives longer. Strange. Pumpkin siblings. You gave one a sword and the other a trident and a net? So, but then I learned something from my wife, who was a whole human being on her own.

I was like, let's make a pumpkin pie with this other pumpkin. She said, no way. Like, why not? She said, you don't know anything. She's right. Jack-o'-lantern pumpkins, which are the kind of pumpkins that you use to make jack-o'-lanterns. They're called that. They were, they were genetically selected to be big and orange in this way. And they don't taste good.

They're not sweet and they're watery. They're not terrific for eating. You can still make a watery puree out of them if you want, but you want the little sugary pumpkins if you want to make pumpkin pie or squash, it turns out. Squash, as we know, is one of the best ways to make pumpkin pie. That said, if you're going over

to Abe and Josh Bingham's house on Shotwell Street, you know, the twins from Discovery Center. Sure, of course. You're going to do a lot of carving and you're going to put all those pumpkin seeds into a big vat so Mr. and Mrs. Bingham can roast the pumpkin seeds and then Abe and Josh have them at school for like months afterwards. I actually, you know what, I really want some pumpkin seeds now. I might do that. They're good. But Jesse Thorne, you're an aesthetically minded person. What do you think about having an array

of pumpkins and gourds on your porch after Halloween leading into the unnameable autumnal holiday that is coming right up? Judge Hodgman, I've got some pumpkins on my porch right now. Boom. That said, I think this can be addressed pretty directly with the addition of a few non-Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins and gourds. Right.

I think that will clarify the intent, let's say. Yeah. You need a gourd array in order to get away from that Halloween feel. A single Jack-O-Lantern gourd, even if it's uncarved, that sends a very special message, much like Jesse's Halloween-y sweater. Like, that's a Halloween-y sweater. Judge Hodgman, there's a color balance issue. This is a mustard colored sweater. I must be something wrong with my televisual conference. I apologize.

But if you add on some other gourds of different colors and sizes and decorative gourds and so forth, you got yourself a centerpiece, a showpiece for your home. Lovely. Eight to 12 weeks. Vanessa wins. Sorry, Vanessa's husband. Let's take a quick break to hear from this week's supporters. After the break, we'll talk about leftover ownership. You're listening to Judge John Hodgman. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast always brought to you by you, the members of MaximumFun.org. Thanks to everybody who's gone to MaximumFun.org slash join. And you can join them by going to MaximumFun.org slash join. John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by the folks over there at Babbel.

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on menus all around the world have in common. They're made in Made In. Save up to 25% this Memorial Day from the 18th until the 27th. Visit madeincookware.com. That's M-A-D-E-I-N cookware.com. Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We're clearing the docket and talking now about leftovers. Here is something from Tom in Denver, Colorado. They call that the Mile High City, John. They call it the Mile High City. Yeah. Once a week, my boss buys breakfast burritos for everyone in our 15-person office. This is great, but not everyone comes into the office every day. Our staff seem perfectly content to let them sit, then toss them out the next morning. But I hate

to see good food go to waste. What authority do I have over these unclaimed burritos? Can I move them to the fridge? Are fridge burritos still the property of the person for whom they were purchased? Tom just wants to eat these burritos up. I like Tom's instinct to marinate these stumps. Tom's looking for an ethical loophole to get those uneaten burritos into his body. Jesse, though, I have a question for you. Obviously, it's long settled law, introduced by your experience in the San Francisco Bay Area that you get a burrito, you eat half of it, and then you put the second half, a.k.a. the stump in the fridge to marinate. It tastes even better the next day.

But these are breakfast burritos. Can you marinate a breakfast stump? No. No, you can't. Breakfast burritos aren't part of the conversation in San Francisco's Mission District, from which I emerged. Right. A fully formed burrito connoisseur. Right.

You were born wrapped up in foil, if I remember correctly. Tightly packed. Yeah, and my father knew to only unfoil the top in case he had to marinate the stump later. You don't eat it on a plate with a knife and fork. You eat it from the end with the foil removed only so much as you need for bites. Yeah, you just tear it down like you're eating a Zagman bar. So I think the key thing here is that often breakfast burritos include things like scrambled eggs. Yeah.

Which are a bad thing to save. They just, a cold scrambled egg is weird. When you reheat it, it gets weirder. It's not a win. You're saying that these, because these are not stumps. These are unclaimed full breakfast burritos that you're saying Tom should not move them into the fridge. Tom should move them into the garbage pail or the compost.

I think Tom can do as he pleases. If Tom is willing to tolerate cold scrambled eggs, that's on Tom. Maybe he just loves salsa that much or whatever. Let's say Tom moves them into the fridge. Are they then Tom's breakfast burritos? I think this is frankly a classic, what you need to do is communicate with someone, Judge John Hodgman case. I think what Tom needs to do is speak to his boss or to his office manager or office administrator, whoever it is that's in charge of food in the office, and say, hey, when there's leftovers at like 10, do you mind if I move them into the fridge and eat them the next day? What that person will say is, no, that sounds fine. And then he will be good

to go. But I would argue, Jesse, that if indeed a breakfast burrito out of the fridge, it's cold, it's gross. And Tom eating it is animalistic and weird. I mean, he can enjoy that. But if most people wouldn't enjoy it, and if there are more than one or two for Tom to enjoy, I also hate to see good food go to waste that Tom should communicate with his boss and say, can we do a pre-order for people who are actually in the office so that we don't get these extra burritos? Because if it's gross to eat them later cold and there's no hygienic necessarily, you can't bring, I don't think you can bring burritos to a food bank, then that is wasteful and that should be stopped. I'll tell you this, here at the Maximum Fun World headquarters in the American Cement

Building in Westlake, Los Angeles. Of course. Our food master is Mr. Kevin Ferguson, the producer of Bullseye, the executive producer of Bullseye. Yeah. Kevin is also the coffee master. He's a real foodie. He's probably the top foodie in our office

since Nick Liao left to produce good food for KCRW. And once in a while, Kevin stops on his way to work at the special breakfast burrito place. He texts his boss, Jesse, says, can I buy everybody breakfast burritos? His boss, Jesse, says, yes, please. And thank you.

And you know what he does then? He goes on the work messaging system and says, who wants a breakfast burrito and what kind? Breakfast burritos to order. The point is, Tom, these dumb, dumb suckers do go bad. But I'll tell you what, I'm going to flip the egg on this one. Tom, I think you can probably revive a breakfast burrito. Wow. I don't think you have to eat it cold. Here's what you do. If your workplace has a little kitchen or kitchenette in it. If your workplace has a sous

vide, you're going to want... No, if you've got a little hot plate of any kind and you can get a pretty good pan. Look, they haven't advertised with us for a while, but I still like them. Made in carbon steel pan or just a pretty basic little pan. And you heat that up and then you put a little, I would suggest a little clarified butter or ghee in there. And then you just, you put the, take the burrito out of the foil or whatever and put it down and toast it on either side, warm it up that way. I think it'll toast up nicely. You know, there are people who advocate for either bean burritos or breakfast burritos as a food prep meal, as a make ahead meal. They usually throw them in the freezer.

I would say this though, Jennifer Marmer was kind enough to point that out. I would say this, those are typically a very different shape from the kind of breakfast burrito that I am thinking of. So if you imagine a frozen burrito from your local grocer, they are flat-ish. And the reason for that is that will defrost and heat evenly or relatively evenly. A cylindrical, especially a thick cylindrical burrito, and the burritos that I'm thinking of are thick daddies. It will be difficult to reheat them evenly, even in a microwave, which reheats relatively evenly. Thank you, Jesse. You're absolutely right.

Before we move on, Tom, I'm whispering to you because I don't want to get in trouble with my friend, the burrito snob over there. I'm not talking about the microwave. I'm talking about a little pan and a little butter like you're making a grilled cheese sandwich. Yeah, they're cylindrical. You know what you can do? I don't want to get hurt. Mush them down. Mush them a little. Get yourself a burrito press. Just mush them a little. Flip them, mush them, flip them, mush them. I'm telling you, these dum-dum suckers don't go bad. You can enjoy them again. But they are fair game, and you should probably order fewer of them for your office because not everybody wants one. Here's a dispute from Meg.

My mom is an excellent cook, but she freezes everything immediately. Whether homemade or store-bought, bread and pastries go directly into the freezer. She'll also freeze dinner leftovers as soon as plates are cleared. She's been known to freeze boxes of See's chocolates. I think the freezer imparts a weird taste. My mom says I'm imagining things. Please rule my mother must wait at least a day before freezing freshly made foods. First of all, I don't like Meg's mother gaslighting Meg here. Freezer foods can

taste bad. Fridge food can taste bad. The odors get stuck in that fridge and they can infect other foods. And there is such a thing as freezer burn. I'm going to spare you all from looking at the Wikipedia page for freezer burn because there is a incredibly disturbing photo of a freezer burned piece of beef. Wow. It's really gross. And freezer burn is dehydration and oxidation due to air reaching the food. So there is, you know, there is damage that freezer can do to the food.

And I, and I don't think you're, I don't think you're imagining things, Meg, when you, when you occasionally taste a little freezer on your food. That said, I did read on the internet somewhere within the past year, and I don't remember where,

that if you want to keep bread fresh, first of all, you just eat it as quickly as possible. Second, it will stale more slowly in the refrigerator, and it will stale the slowest if you freeze it. I don't remember the name of the article where I read this, but I know that it was not called, hey, dum-d dumb, chill your buns. That should have been what it was called.

But as with all frozen food, if you want to avoid freezer burn and off tastes and other damage, you want to wrap it really, really well. So with bread, you want to wrap it twice and you want to make sure that whatever you're wrapping it with, and we're talking about plastic, is in as close contact with the food service as possible. Now, the best way to do that is to use a vacuum sealer. Now, if your kitchen office has a sous vide, like we're talking about with Tom, probably they also have a vacuum sealer, which is a really fun thing where you put some food in a bag and you stick in the vacuum sealer. It goes. I mean, the best part of a vacuum sealer, as far as I'm concerned, is that it means you can store a lot more food under your bed. It sucks all the air out of the bag and it looks like you're like your food is hand solo frozen in carbonite.

That's what I was thinking of. It's really cool. You can also just put stuff in a Ziploc bag. And that's a brand name, but I'm going to use it because everyone knows what I'm talking about. And then what you do is you zip it almost all the way up and then you push it down to expel as much air as possible and then finish the zip. That's the life hack version of a vacuum sealer. So there are ways to avoid the bad tastes that you're getting out of your mom's freezer. And maybe you want to double check her method. There are really two

things that you're talking about here, Meg. One is flavor and one is the other changes that happen to food when it's frozen and reheated. There are foods that are perfectly suited to being frozen, like soups and stews. Most soups and stews will endure being frozen beautifully. It's a wonderful thing to have in your freezer, always ready to go. Right. But because the freezer is, number one, desiccatory, that is to say it dries things out. Dries it out. Just by the nature of, I guess, the refrigeration process, I think, is what does it.

And because there are changes to certain foods in their structures when they freeze, and certainly changes to certain foods in their structures when they are reheated in ways that, you know, lose essential qualities of those foods. There are foods that are kind of ill-suited to being frozen. And bread, for example, is one of them. It's not that bread can't be frozen. You can freeze it. Par-baked frozen bread, for example, works really well.

But you will never get the same texture out of frozen then thawed bread that you get out of fresh bread, which is why people who freeze bread are often doing it in order to make toast later because the toast essentially desiccates the bread further and changes the texture pretty significantly. And that works really well. So like the bread will last longer in the freezer, but it will change. I would say that there are very few foods that are coming off of a dinner plate that deserve to be frozen. I think that, you know, obviously if you make a big batch of mushroom, cream of mushroom soup, so you can have a bath later, that will freeze, as Jesse points out. But if you have cooked foods, particularly cooked meat or leftover green beans on a plate, small amounts that have already been cooked and aired out.

Have shapes that can't be sealed against freezer burn? Yeah. It's just, what are you doing? Put it in the fridge and eat it the next day or maybe the next day after that. Otherwise, it's garbage. I will give one useful piece of advice that I got many years ago from Cooks Illustrated, I think. The plastic wrap that we use often to wrap things up before we put them in the freezer is great because it is stretchy and you can use it to be in close contact with the food, as you described, John. So if you're putting a steak into the freezer, a raw steak, and you want to wrap it up in plastic wrap, that will help

prevent the freezer burn because it can be right up against the surface of the steak in a way that it's hard to do with a zipper bag or whatever. The problem is the thing that makes plastic wrap stretchy is that it essentially has holes in it. It is not impermeable. It is very permeable. And so if you want to save a piece of meat, for example, in the freezer, which is actually a great thing to save in the freezer. It makes it a little worse, but not significantly. What you want to do is wrap it up in plastic wrap so that the plastic wrap is up against the surface all the way around and then wrap that in aluminum foil because aluminum foil is impermeable. So the plastic wrap prevents the freezer burn.

The aluminum foil prevents the desiccation. So it won't dry out in the freezer. So those are all great tips and tricks for freezing things. And for all we know, Meg's mom is using all these best practices already. Maybe she's actually got a vacuum sealer machine. She's taking every plate off the table and just sticking that whole plate and the leftover food into a bag and sucking out the air and making it into some kind of art display or archaeological exhibit, which would be pretty amazing. But Meg, you don't want freezing tips for your mom. You want me to rule against her in terms of what she freezes.

I agree. She's freezing stuff off dinner plates. That's gross. But ultimately, it's her freezer and it's her rules. Her house, her rules. She can freeze whatever she wants. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, some leftover cases that we found way in the back of the freezer.

Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun

or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. If you need a laugh and you're on the go, try S-T-O-P-P-O-D-C-A-S-T-I-R. Were you trying to put the name of the podcast there? Yeah, I'm trying to spell it, but it's tricky. Let me give it a try.

Okay. If you need a laugh and you're on the go, call S-T-O-P-P-P-A-D-I. It'll never fit. No, it will. Let me try. If you need a laugh and you're on the go, try S-T-O-P-P-P-D-C-O-O. Ah, we are so close. Stop podcasting yourself.

A podcast from MaximumFun.org. If you need a laugh, then you're on the go. Judge Hodgman, we're taking a break from the case. We don't have any events upcoming, but we do have a few things to plug. Yeah, I just wanted to mention that in our recent episode with regard to the Philadelphia accent, mention that in our recent episode with regard to the Philadelphia accent, I promised the family of Rachel, Rex, and Patty that I would make a donation to Phil Abundance, the local food bank and food redistribution charity in Philadelphia that they like. And I did it and it felt real good. I mean, this is an episode about leftover food. And as you know, there's a ton of food waste in this country.

And there's a lot of food insecurity. And more than ever, food is expensive and out of reach for a lot of people. So I would encourage you to take some time this season to acquaint yourself with your local food bank, food pantry. In New York, we have City Harvest. There's also chips here in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I'm sure that there are lots and lots of places where you can donate your time, your energy, your canned goods, or your money to help alleviate some food security now at the holidays and all the year round in your community. So please, please try.

If you're here in Los Angeles or in any of a number of other cities in the United States, there's also a lot of awesome casual community food banks of various kinds, sort of like those little free libraries, but for food for your neighborhood or community. So, you know, you can buy a little extra food when you go to the grocery store. You can do a little audit of your pantry and bring that stuff down, put it on the shelf for somebody that needs it.

My experience is that there are nice little old ladies sitting there who will be very thankful to you and tell you how beautiful your children are. So it's a really gratifying experience all around. And hey, I also just want to say, this is the first chance I've had to record since the midterms. I just want to thank all of the listeners who joined me on my phone banking calls to New Hampshire for Maggie Hassan, or who otherwise did a little bit more than voting by phone banking or canvassing or text banking or writing letters to voters.

by phone banking or canvassing or text banking or writing letters to voters. I really, really appreciate your coming along with me on this. I'm grateful to you and I'm grateful for the results. It was a lot better than I was worried it was going to be. As you know, we're now going into a runoff for the Senate in Georgia. I'm going to be doing my part to help Senator Reverend Warnock hold his seat in Georgia. And I hope that you will join me again, if you can, to do that either on your own or with me. I'll let you know what I'm doing as soon as those details fall into place. But for the most part, I just want to say thank you. That's all I have to say about that. If you want to come see me and you live in Southern California, the Put This On Shop is going to be in real life on Sunday, the 4th of December at the Pasadena City College Flea Market, which is my favorite monthly flea market in Southern California.

And we had such a great time at the South Pasadena Vintage Flea Market, which is right there near Mission Street in South Pasadena, one of my favorite towns in Southern California. in South Pasadena, one of my favorite towns in Southern California. We met some awesome Judge John Hodgman listeners, some really kind Judge John Hodgman listeners, and had a great time

with my tiny Japanese van. We're going to be back there on Saturday the 17th. And that's nice because that's like an afternoon thing. Who knows? Rob Hubel might stop by again.

Yes, that's right. Last time Rob Hubel stopped by. I wish I could have seen Rob Hubel might stop by again. Yes, that's right. Last time Rob Hubel stopped by. I wish I could have seen Rob Hubel and you and your van. Would have been a lot of fun. You can visit me virtually, though, at putthis.on on Instagram or at putthisonshop.com. Get yourself a holiday gift. Get one for somebody else. The code Vintage Justice ships all but the big stuff for free in the United States. So be sure to use it and I'll see you online or in real life. Let's get back to the

docket. Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We're clearing the docket this week. And before the break, we talked about the best way to store burrito stumps and freeze leftovers. We reached way into the back, Judge Hodgman, of our inbox freezer to find two leftover cases that have been on ice for almost a decade. Shame on me. Shame on me. First, here's a case from Courtney from 2015. That's right. We've been doing this show a long time. It's been a long time. Seven years ago, Courtney wrote and said this.

My boyfriend and I often host each other for dinner. Our custom is whoever's the guest brings the main course. I get the impression they don't live together. Let me just clarify that. That's my impression from this letter. Yeah. When it comes to leftovers, we disagree. My boyfriend says whoever brought the food and therefore paid for it gets the leftovers. I think they should be offered to the host as a thank you for their hospitality. We're both young adults, one in university, the other newly graduated,

so budget is a concern. But we disagree most when the meal is delicious. They're now in their mid-40s, by the way. Please rule. Who is entitled to leftovers at the end of a dinner party? First of all, the first thing I did, of course, whenever I go into one of these old emails is I write them back and I say, sorry, it's I go into one of these old emails is I write them back and I say, sorry, it's been so long. How's everything been going so far? I have not heard back from Courtney. I do not know if Courtney and her boyfriend are still together, if they ever ended up moving in together. Maybe this was the dispute that ended their relationship. I hope

Courtney and Courtney's boyfriend, you're all doing as okay as possible out there. If you want to reach out to Courtney listeners at home, just send her an email at court42069 at geocities.com. That's right. Wasn't quite that long ago. Not that far in the freezer. Not that freezer burnt. But in any case, this is also a two-parter here, because I feel like there are two questions.

One is the specific question. because I feel like there are two questions. One is the specific question. If you have a deal with your partner and you don't live together and you bring over, say, a lasagna for dinner, do you take that rest of lasagna home with you or do you leave it at Courtney's? What's your instinct, Jesse? I'm putting you in the role of Courtney's boyfriend here. You've made a lasagna. Oh, remember that amazing macaroni and cheese you made for me and my family years ago? When you came over here and you wore that really cool apron? Yeah. Well, you know, do what I can.

Yeah. Let's say you're going over to Courtney's house and you guys are in Lerf and you bring over a mac and cheese and you don't eat the whole casserole. Who keeps the leftovers? Do you take it home with you or and you don't eat the whole casserole, who keeps the leftovers? Do you take it home with you or do you leave it at Courtney's house? Of course I leave it at Courtney's house. Right. Of course you leave it at Courtney's house. God just wants to steal his mac and cheese back. I mean, you could, if you're both sort of struggling college students and you can only

afford to go to a book reading and then have the author sign a whole bunch of weird oddball stuff that you have brought, but you refuse to buy a book because you're a broke college student. And you say that in the author's face while smiling. Those monsters back at the Ann Arbor border store, University of Michigan monsters signed all that stuff. They didn't even buy a book. Now look where you are. There's no borders anymore. Sorry. I hold a grudge. I hold a signing line grudge from time to time.

You know what I say? Open up your pine client and send them an electronic mail. John get on all dot rec dot sport dot Hodgman complaints posted on usenet. It would be like, you know, it would be gracious, I suppose, to say, oh, we have all this leftover mac and cheese. Let's split it. You take half, I'll take half. That way we can, you know, we're not living together, but we are trying to embody a shared

life here to a certain degree. But that's just graciousness. You bring something to someone's house, you give them all of it. No takesies-backsies on something you bring. That goes for a regular dinner party too, right? What do you say, Jennifer Marmer, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like if it's a potluck and you bring like a bathtub full of cream of mushroom soup. Oh, no, you know what I'm going to bring to the potluck? I'm bringing a bathtub's amount of cream of mushroom soup in a bathtub-shaped bread bowl. No one's going to eat all of that. Do I take that home with me or do I leave? I mean, in that case, I'd probably be doing the host a favor to take that bathtub-shaped bread bowl home

because they don't want that. It doesn't reheat well. Jennifer Marmon, you go to a potluck, you don't take your leftovers home, right? You leave them there, right? No, I always leave it. There are times when a host will ask me to like, oh, no, we have so much. Please take. And I'm like, it makes me so uncomfortable to leave the person's house with something in hand. I don't show up empty handed, but I do want to leave empty handed. I always steal something, but that's a whole other.

That sounds like a different dispute. You steal something personal for your scrapbook that you keep in your secret room in your basement. I try and take like a little glass animal figurine or something that I can palm. Anything I can cast a curse on. I just take a few hairs. Yeah, I guess I didn't realize how much of a gimme this one was, Courtney. I thought this might spark a little bit of discussion, but we're all in agreement here. Jesse, Jennifer, John, every J in attendance of the J squad all agree in this tribunal.

You're right, Courtney, your boyfriend is wrong. I hope you all are still together if that's the right thing for you, because then you get to share a fridge and then you get to argue over how to freeze things. Here's something from Maxwell, who also wrote to us in 2015. When eating last night's pizza the next morning, I prefer to reheat my slice. However, my fiancee Jenny prefers her leftover pizza cold. She simply says, it's better that way. I think that's bananas. Will you help us?

So Tom Parada, the author of The Leftovers, says that he prefers his next day pizza cold. Damon Lindelof, the showrunner, producer, and creator of the TV show The Leftovers, based on the novel The Leftovers, says he prefers his next day pizza hot. Neither one of them would record a voice memo for me because they're tired of my shenanigans. They've had it with me. Not only did Tom already record a voice memo for this episode, but also Damon Lindelof was very kind enough to talk with me about the television show The Prisoner for our upcoming Max Fund Members Only podcast about The Prisoner that Elliot Kalin and Jordan Cowling and I made called Be Potting You.

So he's already given too much of his time to me. I don't blame him for not giving me a voice memo, but he said he likes it hot in the morning. In any case, Be Potting You, the podcast is done. It's in the can. We're editing it. We'll have it available for you soon. Meanwhile, Jesse, what do you think? If you have pizza the night before, it's the can. We're editing it. We'll have it available for you soon. Meanwhile, Jesse, what do you think? If you have pizza the night before, it's the morning, you eat it cold out of the fridge,

or do you hot it up somehow? And in which case, how? In the morning, I don't have the emotional energy to hot it up. And I like pizza every which way. So I would probably eat it cold. If you said to me, how do you prefer to eat leftover pizza? Yeah. My response would probably be to heat it up in my toaster oven. Because if you heat it in the microwave, it gets mushy. Can't do that. And if you heat it up in the toaster oven, it will crisp up a little. Now, I will say this, John.

I feel strongly about not storing the leftover pizza in the refrigerator in the box. Oh, of course. Because it desiccates, John. It desiccates. This is what the whole show is about, you dumb, dumb suckers. Desiccation. You can't, you got to be careful in that fridge. You got to wrap stuff up or else it's going to get desiccated.

That's Hodgman's desiccation declaration. You got to put your pizza into the sucking machine, make it go, make it into Han Solo or something. Or, you know, wrap it well in plastic foil and then tin foil. You got to keep the air away from it because then it gets gross. You're right. You can't put it in the box. You got to wrap it up.

How do you prefer your leftover pizza, John? Well, there are ways to heat up pizza that are satisfactory. And we've discussed toaster ovens before. And the show is on the side of Breville toaster ovens, which I think is the kind that you use. I do. And it does an effective job of heating up pizza the next day. And it's large enough to hold a slice. If you heat up a cast iron pan that is large enough to hold a slice, and I'm not

talking about heated at the highest setting, but if you let it get really nice and warm on a medium flame for a while, put the pizza down in it and then cover it up. That's another good way. The crust will get a little bit crispy and the cheese will melt nicely, but you got to watch for scorching on the bottom because it goes a little too far. If you happen to have a pizza stone in your oven, and you probably should, because you can just leave it in there, whether you're making pizza or not. If you've got room in your oven to hold a pizza stone in there, it's great because it holds and regulates temperature just by being in there. And you have time to preheat your oven up to 400 degrees or even higher. And then you put your pizza in there, it's basically you're at a pizza place.

You're at a pizza parlor. It's the same thing that they do when they throw a slice in there in their pizza oven to heat it up, except those ovens are much hotter, but you get the point. There are a lot of satisfactory ways to heat up a slice of pizza. That said, the answer is cold. Hot pizza at night, cold pizza in the morning. It's the perfect balance. Cold,

congealed pizza is its own thing as far as I'm concerned. This is the stump marination of pizza. Yeah, exactly. It's its own special flavor. And I can't imagine life without it. So obviously, people like what they like, Maxwell. If you're still in touch with your fiance, Jenny, Maxwell, if you're still in touch with your fiance, Jenny, after seven years, you can tell her Judge John Hodgman agrees with her. It's not bananas. That said, you like what you like. If you're on the Damon Lindelof side, maybe you'll become an award-winning television showrunner and the creator of Watchmen, the television show that by all rights should never have worked, but worked better than ever thanks to Damon and the amazing staff of writers and producers that he assembled for that show. Incredible show. Watch it.

Anyway, cold pizza's the best. That's what I say. The docket's clear. That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman. Our producer is Jennifer Marmer. Our editor is Valerie Moffat. Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman. We're on Instagram at Judge John Hodgman. Make sure Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman. We're on Instagram at Judge John Hodgman. Make sure to hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJHO, and check out the Maximum Fun subreddit at maximumfun.reddit.com to discuss this episode. Hey, since we are about to have probably the most tumultuous family dinner of all the year coming up in your calendars in a day or few.

Let me send out our call again for family feuds. Family feuds. Surely there are some feuds that might come up around the dinner table between you and your cousin and your uncles or your aunts, as they say in Gilbert and Sullivan. Also accepting disputes with your mom and dad or with your kids or with your siblings, any extended family disputes. And hey, what about a dispute with another family, like a real family feud? Yeah, let's get some. If you're a Hatfield, what's your problem with the McCoys? Vice versa. Like, did you ever have a feud with the family across the street because they put too many loud decorations up for Xmas time and then invited the television show of

christmas light fights to showcase their incredible display and it and you couldn't get out of your driveway for a month or whatever boy that would be amazing if there was that kind of feud don't worry you don't have to get the other the other party in on this you got a gripe about another family in your neighborhood something that you and your family have always talked about, this one family doing wrong, I want to hear all about it at MaximumFun.org slash JJHO. And of course, we will take your disputes on any subject at MaximumFun.org slash JJHO. No case too big or too small. So go to MaximumFun.org slash JJHO. Break it down for us. We'll break it down for you. We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.