A Food Post, Sort Of

My dad--ok, I'm not even going to start talking about my dad, because, well, if you know my dad you're going to be rolling your eyes within moments, and if you don't know my dad, I don't even know where to begin, plus there's the whole other-people's-lives-and-familial-privacy thing. So let's just not go there. All we need to say for today's purposes is that my dad left town, which indeed he did. And he gave me the contents of his refrigerator, in two shopping bags (are your eyes rolling yet?).

We're talking two eggs, four lettuce leaves, a half stick of butter, and half a quart of aged milk. And a butternut squash.

But that's not all. We're also talking a frozen trout the size of E's leg that he caught in Idaho. Three frozen packages of smoked salmon that they must have brought back from England as they are 200g apiece. A tube (a tube?) with a French label that I'm guessing must be some weird mustard thing because the only ingredient I recognized was moutarde. An assortment of bizarre condiments. A bag of frozen hairy green stuff that I remembered being told was dill just before I went to throw it out. Some completely unidentifiable foodstuffs that I did throw out.

Everything was covered in thin brown liquid that had spilled from a small bottle whose label was all in Japanese, and it was just disgusting. As I unpacked the bags, I was on the phone to my mom (who is not married to my dad) and as I narrated my unpacking to her in real time, the whole thing was just too ridiculous--and predictable.

I feel that this anecdote does not work at all unless you know my dad, so to the rest of you, I apologize.

[My sister got the contents of the pantry. I shudder to think.]

[We did, however, score on the liquor front: Jim Beam, tequila, grappa, sake, dessert wine--all with unintelligible labels except the Jim Beam.]

[I threw out the can of Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, to the amusement of my mother.]

[Edited to add: M says the brown stuff was very fancy soy sauce from Japan. Oh well.]