Eddie’s food frustrations: those damn packages that never open properly

Adeline (nickname: Eddie) loves food, lots of it and often, both at home and out. Now, things usually go well, but sometimes they don’t. In the series Eddie’s food frustrations you can read about the latter. This week, out of sheer frustration, she almost threw her soup across the living room. 

Three times, I repeat three (!) times this week, I found myself holding a crumpled plastic tab while my soup remained firmly sealed airtight in the plastic container intended for it. It sat there on my kitchen counter, sort of triumphantly. As if to say: ha, try opening me now. Which is quite a task when you don’t have a single millimetre to pick it loose. Even though you know better, you still try to find that millimetre.

Because I’m not easily defeated, I grabbed the biggest kitchen knife from the drawer and went after the courgette soup in its plastic container. In case you’re wondering, I won.

Damn plastic tab

For anyone who likes to spoon down some soup at lunchtime, Picnic’s fresh (and ready-made) soups are a godsend, but at the same time, a plastic-made hell. I have genuinely never found such delicious fresh courgette soup in such an indescribably shitty package.

And every time, I try again. One time I think I can outsmart the film with a firm yank, the next I do it gently and carefully, and at one point I even thought it would be smart to try pulling it in the opposite direction. But every time, I end up with that rotten, damn plastic tab in my hand. And the rest remains shiny and tightly stretched across the top of my soup.

Truly disgusting

What might be even worse? When one tiny strip of plastic comes away from the airtight film. At this point, the solution-oriented part of your brain sees a hole in the packaging, meaning no tools are needed anymore, obviously. The opening is there, so this is going to work. And that’s when it gets truly disgusting.

Carefully, you wriggle a finger into the open space and hook it behind the rest of the film. Your fingers are immediately covered well past the knuckles in the divine courgette soup, and still the whole thing won’t come off. In the end, you’re left picking loose pieces of plastic soaked in courgette soup, and that never goes smoothly. Kitchen counter covered in soup, wall covered in soup, you covered in soup.

Hilarious

Somewhere, I think they know, those people at the company who design plastic containers like this. And that they simply say to each other, ‘let’s seal it extra tightly, that’ll be hilarious.’

Read also:

• If you’re horrified by bits in your food
• Why some people shouldn’t be allowed to use a self-checkout
• The grossest restaurant dining scene ever