I've seen them before someplace, and our renewed acquaintance is not always like finding a long-lost friend.

First I should explain that our household usually only involves cooking for two. That's a joy and a curse.

The joy is that cooking for two is a lot easier than, say, cooking for five, which used to be the number around our table. We also take turns cooking, which makes it even easier.

But there's a dark side to only having to prepare two portions of everything. It's hard to cook just enough for two and not have enough left over for three or maybe four. Cookbooks don't ordinarily come with recipes for just two—much less for one.

Usually the recipe expects the cook to serve at least four and sometimes more. So inevitably when we cook for two, we end up with enough for at least three. Therein lies a problem. One portion is left over, but there are two of us. Someone has to eat another leftover other than the single entree. Arguments sometimes follow as to who is going to eat what. And I sometimes feel I am supposed to eat more leftovers than I want.

That's the problem with eating in.

But there also is the problem of eating out. Most restaurants these days seem to serve portions intended for about one and a half—although often it looks like a portion for two to me. In the old days this not only wasn't true, but a lot of restaurant diners didn't bother to bring home the unconsumed portion of their dinner. Presumably it went into the restaurant garbage can.

But in recent years the plastic box, usually made of Styrofoam, has become widely available, and many restaurant diners bring home what they didn't eat at the restaurant to eat later in the week.

They reason, not unnaturally, that they paid for the meal, even the part they didn't consume, so they might as well bring it home and eat it the next day.

Chinese restaurants are particularly likely to serve too much. I don't think there is anything ethnic about this. Some Italian restaurants also are heavy with the ladle and the pasta. And they have Styrofoam take-home boxes, too.

It's only the upscale California cuisine restaurants that are likely to serve less than a full portion. Their emphasis is on presentation, not quantity, taste or filling one's stomach.

Chinese restaurant operators are only too happy to give you something to take your uneaten food home in. In fact, I think they expect it. Why they don't make portions smaller is a mystery to me. Maybe it has to do with the way Chinese food is cooked, in woks. Figuring the number of portions in a wok may not be all that easy, although Chinese restaurants traditionally increase the number of dishes when the number of diners increases: "with six you get an egg roll" and so on.

The other problem with Chinese food is that it usually looks a lot better the day it was served than it does the day after. I'm not sure if this is why I object to eating Chinese leftovers, but somehow they just don't look right to me. Chinese food ought to be hot out of the wok. Stored for a day or so in the refrigerator, it tends to have a certain wilted look.

I suppose you could say the same thing for leftover pasta. It looks better the first day than the second or third.

On the other hand, some food looks just as good to me the second day around as it did the first. Take sourdough waffles, for instance. I make more than we can eat of these on Sunday mornings, and we put the unused waffles in the freezer. They unfreeze quickly and are just as good a day or a week later.

Household hints aside, my point is that some leftovers are better left unleft, if I can put it that way. Some leftovers are better left over, and there are many kinds of food in an undetermined category—that is, they may or may not be better the second or third time around.

Of course, it's also possible that not all leftovers need to be consumed at all. Some foods are just garbage if they aren't eaten on the day they were prepared. But in the house in which I dwell, not eating leftovers is considered a serious misdemeanor no matter what they are.

And you just don't want to get in trouble, especially at home, if you can avoid it.