#984 Eating the last piece of dessert somebody left at your house

Neil Pasricha

Goodbye, old friend

Very occasionally, a kind soul will come over toting a homemade dessert made from some combination of apples, brown sugar, brownie batter, Skor bits, marshmallows, cherries, and oatmeal. They set their heavy glass dish down on our kitchen counter, and peel back the plastic bag to reveal an earth-toned rainbow of deliciosity. We gaze at its sweet beauty for a moment, but then look at the pile of cold weenies and bulk-pack of yellow macaroni salad laying on the counter, and walk away, knowing that we’ll get to that dessert later, just as soon as we fill our stomachs with all the cheap stuff everyone else picked up from the clearance rack.

And eventually it does happen — the end of the meal arrives and the hero dessert is paraded to the table with pomp, fanfare, forks, and a stack of plates. By now everyone is stuffed, and so while people dip into this rectangle of tastiness, they just don’t have room to send it back empty. It inevitably gets Saran-wrapped up and put in the fridge for leftovers, hasty promises made to return the dish another time.

And that’s when it gets interesting. I’m a pretty big fan of dessert. I like its style. I think it’s cool. And so I eat it as soon as possible. I have a piece here, I have a piece there. It replaces bread the next morning at breakfast, starch the next evening at dinner. I really get on that dessert. I chip away at it until eventually there is only one piece left. And it is the consumption of that last piece, that final, beautiful square of leftover homemade dessert that is always the sweetest.

See, by this point it’s an old friend. I know it’s taste well, having succumbed to its vice-like grip over me for a few days since the party. I may actually be sick of it, but I would never admit it. All I know is that there’s a few mere minutes of enjoying its company left forever. It is a very happy yet very sad time.

There are some ways that eating the last remaining piece of dessert can be made sweeter, though:

  1. First up, eating it cold. When that dessert is only a couple feet away from your mouth, there really is no time allowed for heating. (+1 point)
  2. Next, eating it straight from the big serving dish. This is tricky, because if you’re watching TV you need to awkwardly lift a three-pound glass dish with one hand so you can shovel it into your mouth with the other. Be careful for wobbling. (+2 points)
  3. Methodically scraping every last crumb, ring of dried icing, and molecule of congealed syrup out of the dish, even getting up and getting a spatula if you have to. Licking is optional here, but may be necessary. (+3 points)
  4. The big one: thinking about the dessert just before you’re about to fall asleep or when you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Thinking about it and not being able to get it out of your head until you walk to the kitchen, your feet freezing on the cold linoleum, touch-grabbing your way through the black maze of your apartment, until you pop open that refrigerator door, its bright light beaming out at you like the gates of heaven opening, and you just grab that saran-wrapped slice of greatness and eat it right on up. (+10 points)

AWESOME!

This is the end, beautiful friend

19 thoughts to “#984 Eating the last piece of dessert somebody left at your house”

  1. guess what……..

    IM BACKKK!!!

    mwwaahhhaaahhaaahhaa! I sound so evil!

    hmm oh well, I guess you will all have to put up with me once again! :D
    I shall explain my absence… When the blog ended – my internet crashed at work – right on the very last day. It wasn’t until quite a few days later that i found out what the No1 thing was :( (good choice btw neil) and now since then, I’ve been flat out at work, My boss has gone overseas & is returning tomorrow which meant work was super busy and I had A LOT of filling & archiving to do! (TAX TIME in australia!) My husband has started up his own business & i havent had a chance to write back to my e-pal buddy Bekah lately! (So sorry & I will reply soon! – WITH A SMILEY! hahaha – im terrible!)

    So! I’m back! I’m excited & glad to be here :)

    on todays post, I agree. I love the left over dessert & planning on having lots of it next week! ;) wink wink nudge nudge… anyone???

  8. I don’t have room to entertain at my place at the moment so I haven’t gotten to enjoy this awesome thing…..yet.
    I’ll tell you this, though….its always a great feeling when my dessert is a hit at a cookout or get-together. I rarely get to take any of mine back home.

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  11. Gosh darnnit! No one ever leaves dessert at my house. Anyway, once in English class at my old high school we had like a cookie potluck thing. Everybody brought cookies, and we laid them out on the desks and just waltzed around sampling everybody’s cookies. It was the best English class ever. There was too many to eat all at once so I brought some home. That’s how I con relate to this post.

  12. This is definitely a favorite I’ll eat for bed-time snack, breakfast, recess, lunch, afternoon snack, appetizer, dessert and, well, pretty near everytime it calls me into the kitchen…until it I feel empty and blue as the last picture:(

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