I Am Afraid Of Mayonnaise That Isn’t Mine
February 22nd, 2006
Find me someone who is willing to use mayo from someone else’s house other than their own and I’ll show you someone who likes to live on the edge.
For whenever I visit a friend’s home for lunch and I’m given the choice of tuna salad or turkey, egg salad or roast beef, ambrosia salad or an apple, potato salad or french fries, cole slaw or a side salad… I will always choose the non-mayo item.
This is primarily because…I am afraid of mayonnaise that isn’t mine.
Some mayo lovers scoff at such fears, wondering what childhood incident caused me to feel such a way about other people’s mayonnaise. Others suspect I may simply be crazy to be open to visiting an acquaintances’ house and then turn up my nose at the suggested lunch for the day in question. And there is a group of people who stand alongside me, proud and committed to the polite decline when it comes to a lunch item containing mayonnaise that isn’t mine.
I mean, do we really know how our friends handle their mayo?
Just like I can’t support people who use the same knife to spread peanut butter and then jelly onto a slice of bread (one food item always ends up with the other food item slathered on the inside of their perspective jars), I don’t support the usage of other people’s mayonnaise. Who knows what food items have made their way into that jar of mayo? For a more educated look at why your best friend’s jar of mayo isn’t the mayo you want to experience, take a look at this handy, step-by-step historical list of what’s probably happened to your best friend’s jar of white:
- Friend buys new jar of mayo.
- Friend uses knife to spread mayo into tuna, then cuts sandwich with knife, adds more mayo to sandwich — thus placing miniscule bits of tuna fish into the jar of mayo.
- Next day, friend uses new knife to fold mayo into potato salad. Remnants of chives and potato shrapnel find their way back into the jar of mayonnaise.
- Mayo is accidentally left out overnight.
- Tuna, chives and potato bits have a party.
- You show up the next day, and there’s the jar of mayo — ready and waiting for you to make your choice.
See what I mean?
Just like you keep track of your past jobs on your resume and just like the library keeps track of where a book has been and just like potential romantic partners should be keeping track of their previous escapades so everyone knows they’re safe — so, too should your friend with his or her own jar of mayonnaise. If when I come over to your house for lunch I could see a list like the following, I might be able to make a much more informed decision in regards to your jar of white:
Mayonnaise: Purchased Feb 22, 2006
Feb 22: Opened jar, slathered mayo on roast beef sandwich. No double dipping.
Feb 23: Left jar open with knife it in at room temperature for 26 minutes.
Feb 25: Made deviled eggs with mayo, fly gets caugt in jar and must be scooped out.
Feb 27: Friend dares me to stick finger in mayo, lick off, repeat until sick.
Feb 28: Strips of carrot and pepper bits from cole slaw lodged in jar of mayo — mixed up mayo with fork after unable to retrieve said items so other housemates aren’t grossed out by inclusion of said items in mixture of mayo.
Then, I could sit down at your dining room table, look at the mayo-filled items before me, scan the history of this particular jar of mayonnaise and then proudly announce in the most self-effacing way possible that I was refusing to eat absolutely anything that contained mayo from your jar.
It might be rude, sure. It might set you off, okay. It might make you wonder if I was really a true friend. But I’d still be alive the next week, and you…
Not so much.
I inherited my need for “clean mayo” from my father. No knife is allowed to enter mayo jar at all. Just clean spoons, neatly scooping them out. Place on bread or something - then use the knife.
Comment by Shevy — February 22, 2006 @ 6:28 am
If you don’t bring out the Hellmanns, you are not bringing out the best.
Growing up, we had family friends who always served Miracle Whip with the coldcuts platter, and made the potato salad with it. I hated those parties. But she also used an electric mixer instead of the old masher utensil to make her mash potatoes. They were never lumpy just velvety smooth, which I actually liked. My mother hated the woman for that.
Comment by Jerry — February 22, 2006 @ 6:33 am
I love the post today, Pauly. It makes my own problems seem so irrelevant.
GTMAS*
* going to make a sandwich
Comment by nic — February 22, 2006 @ 6:55 am
I tease my husband all of the time because he refuses to eat mayo unless I “just” opened the jar from the store.
For a while he got better about it.. but we went to visit my parents for christmas last year and both got food poisoning from a jar of mayo they had in their refridgerator.
Comment by kristin — February 22, 2006 @ 6:58 am
What if it’s one of those handy-dandy squeeze Mayo bottles? Will you relent then?
Comment by Kevin — February 22, 2006 @ 7:16 am
Jerry- you bring up an age old “heated” debate in our family. Hellmann’s vs. Miracle Whip. At Thanksgiving, the hosting household is required to serve two Rockefeller salads. One with hellmanns, the other with Miracle Whip.
Pauly, why don’t you just “have on your presence” a personal, travel mayonaisse supply.
Comment by H.F. Peterman — February 22, 2006 @ 7:20 am
i often wonder about your childhood incidents
Comment by meme — February 22, 2006 @ 7:36 am
Meme - You mean like the incident where I fell into a vat of mayonnaise at the Kraft plant and I was screaming and trying to claw my way out and that’s what that picture up there symbolizes and that’s why I don’t like things falling in my mayo — much like I fell into mayo myself?
You mean like that?
Comment by Pauly D — February 22, 2006 @ 7:38 am
All my mayo is in those single-use packets that I steal from restaurants, with the expiry date clearly marked on the package… so feel free to spread mayo on everything when you come visit.
Comment by Dave2 — February 22, 2006 @ 7:38 am
hehe. love the graphic. almost as much as your Pauly D. cologne bottle.
Comment by kristine — February 22, 2006 @ 7:40 am
Mayo is disgusitng. So it Miracle Whip. And it’s not “salad dressing,” either…like you would put it on a tossed salad? Or even include it in potato salad or coleslaw? Ugh. Why not just call it “vomit salad?”
(I guess the key to me losing the 10 pounds I want to lose is to re-read this post, because I’m about to hurl…)
Comment by Flower Girl — February 22, 2006 @ 8:17 am
It’s times like this that I am reminded of how my dislike, or even hatred, of mayonaisse is a good thing.
Comment by Hilary — February 22, 2006 @ 8:31 am
if i haven’t made my own tuna fish sandwich, there’s no way i’m eating it. tuna in someone else’s refrigerator makes the hair on my back stand on end.
Comment by dgm — February 22, 2006 @ 8:54 am
I’m so with you on this one… double dipping mayo is BAD… however I have no problems with double dipping dip or ranch dressing at restaurants, or salsa… cuz it’s a distinct amount, independent of the jar of origin.
Comment by Adri — February 22, 2006 @ 8:55 am
What!!! Nobody has mentioned the squeeze mayo jars you can now get. They are the best thing since sliced bread.
Dave2 has a good idea too and it’s cheap. The next time you go through the drive-thru, just say you’re British and need lots of Mayo for your “chips”. Not 2 or 3 packets, but lots! Bags and bags of the stuff.
Comment by monkeyinabox — February 22, 2006 @ 9:15 am
Rest assured, my mayo is clean (am now adding that to the list of sentences I will likely never use again). My mom always made us use a spoon to get the mayo out of the jar — no knife has seen the inside of my mayonnaise containers! And while I’m not a big fan of washing silverware (although I like to use clean silverware), my dishwasher — aka, roommate — makes sure that’s clean. And I clean the bathroom. In case you were wondering if that was sanitary, too.
Comment by sandra — February 22, 2006 @ 9:21 am
Yes, like Hilary, I am not one with the mayo.
Comment by Keith — February 22, 2006 @ 9:53 am
I keep my own jar of mayo with me at all times, for this very reason.
Same with peanut butter, regular butter and jelly… It may seem like a hassle, but you can avoid the awkward moment of refusing another man’s mayo when you can say, “No thanks, I brought my own.”
Comment by The Centaur — February 22, 2006 @ 10:19 am
Whew, it’s so refreshing to come over here, Pauly, and discover that I’m not the only Mayonnaise Neurotic. I purchase the smaller mayo jars to ensure freshness. Better yet, the new Lite Mayo’s come in a squeezable tube! No double dipping! Just squeeeeeeeeeze the appropriate amount out in your bowl or on your pita pocket or bread slice!
And, when the page of this post first loaded, I could’ve sworn that was a picture of Scott Stapp on the mayo jar…didn’t look like you. Is that you?
Comment by Melina — February 22, 2006 @ 10:53 am
Melina - That is, indeed, me.
Comment by Pauly D — February 22, 2006 @ 10:59 am
Hello Paul, great post, hit too close to home! Well, prior to Kristin’s unfortunate episode at my house, I was not aware that mayonnaise could cultivate itself into such a weapon of mass destruction. Consequently, I have reformed our fridge protocol, to wit: periodic review of expiration dates AND like monkeyinabox use squeezable mayonnaise only. It’s a miracle (no pun intended) that Kristin did not get ill growing up, or hmmm maybe that’s why she has such a sensitive stomach now. Sorry sweetie.
Comment by Kristin's Mum — February 22, 2006 @ 11:19 am
Yes, the squeezable upside-down plastic containers are where it’s at. Are you still using flint to make fire, man?
Comment by Belinda — February 22, 2006 @ 12:40 pm
Or you could avoid the whole issue like me and just not consume mayonnaise at all!
Comment by Glen — February 22, 2006 @ 12:58 pm
Pauly D..you are a man with issues. I will give you that, but babe I’m with you on the food stuff. Let it be known that after my “Turkey Incident of 2005″…I will never cook a turkey again. Harsh, Rash, Crazy… Maybe, but I was a sick cookie for days. It was because I tried to be all Martha-y on Thanksgiving and “rubbed” the bird like Martha was watching me and giving me a grade.
Regarding the mayo….That is why I buy the small jars. It’s just not good to keep that stuff too long. No double dipping..ever! Ugh. No way can anyone go through all the mayo in the large jar before it expires! (back to your expiration topic.) I’ll stop..lol.
xoxo
Comment by Thoughtsgalore — February 22, 2006 @ 5:40 pm
you’ve got issues. guess it’s peanut butter and jam for you at my house.
Comment by better safe than sorry — February 22, 2006 @ 8:05 pm
With something like mayo, I will not eat it if I can’t sniff it first. And nothing says “rude guest” louder than demanding to sniff condiments/dairy products. (Except maybe unrestrained flatulence.)
Comment by T. Malone — February 22, 2006 @ 9:13 pm
Gawd
all you lot would starve in Thailand
Comment by cat — February 23, 2006 @ 5:36 am
I planned a murder once, hiding a jar of mayonaisse under my bed for days. I was going to offer to make a sandwich for my _____ and poison him/her.
I’m not sure why I didn’t follow through. I think I must have gotten over it. Or forgot.
Comment by nic — February 23, 2006 @ 6:33 am
Melina - that’s just how Scott looks in his sex video!
Comment by nic — February 23, 2006 @ 6:38 am
Pauly, I thought it was just me. It is not just mayo, though. I cannot take looking into a container of anything (ie: jelly, mustard, mayo, applesauce, relish…) and seeing anything that is not the original product. Crumbs or particles of any kind are strictly prohibited! Ewww! I cringe to think of it! I try to get enough mayo, or any other product, out in one go just to prevent the probable naughty particle/crumb from finding it’s way into the jar/container.
And double dipping!! Never on communal snacks! Never!
Thanks Pauly! I don’t feel alone in the world anymore!!
Comment by cutiepie2 — February 26, 2006 @ 2:03 am
Squeezable mayo containers will take care of your mayo fears Pauly. Plus you save water not having to wash a knife or spoon to get mayo out of a jar. So you’re actually doing yourself and the rest of California a favor!
Comment by groovebunny — February 26, 2006 @ 9:12 am
I gave up mayo a few years ago for this very reason–I had roommates who just couldn’t distinguish between my mayo and theirs, and they would leave jars of mayo out on the counter overnight. Interestingly, I didn’t experience any withdrawl symptoms. I prefer mustard, anyway.
Comment by scrumtrulescent — March 8, 2006 @ 5:21 am
I collect those small mayo packets from resturaunts or buy them for camping. How long are they good for? they don’t have an expiration on them. I have some half a year old and am afraid of them, but hate dry sandwitches. I wish I liked mustard on sandwiches but oooohhh the white slimey wipped fat and eggs are better. I can understand why people don’t like it though.
Comment by darrin — August 31, 2007 @ 10:51 am