Mushroom Hell
The aftermath of all those great wild mushroom dinners we've been having is the inevitable pickling. When Ojiichan can't eat all the mushrooms he finds, he pickles them in salt and stores them in jars in our fridge.
To eat these pickled mushrooms, you have to go through a special soaking/rinsing desalination process that lasts 2-4 days. The end result is a vaguely mushroom shaped, tasteless brown lump of chewy congealed slime. If cooked in miso soup it's at least edible, in all other forms it's absolutely vile.
The jars of pickled mushrooms in our fridge have been... well... mushrooming. He left this morning for Japan and I really wish I could just chuck all the jars out. But then he'd get mad the next time he came back to visit, because he knows I hate pickled mushrooms and wouldn't have eaten them, and wasting food drives him crazy.
We get along pretty well in most environments, but the kitchen is an area where arguments can flare up very quickly.
The last big argument we got into, last visit, involved me trying to brew myself some herbal tea. I started a pot, then walked back into the kitchen five minutes later to pour the tea, and discovered it was no longer there. "What happened?" I asked my dad.
"I THREW AWAY YOUR JUNK TEA!!"
"How could you do that! Why didn't you just tell me you wanted to use the teapot?"
"IF YOU WANT TO MAKE STUPID JUNK TEA BUY ANOTHER TEAPOT!"
I walked away and didn't talk to him for the rest of that day. I have somewhat of a temper too and the easiest way to avoid blow-up is to depart from the situation.
If he ever moves in with me permanently he has got to have a separate kitchen.
Foster Care System Perspectives
5 comments:
I think you will want to get a house with a mother-in-law unit in the back. That way, he can have his pickled mushrooms in HIS fridge.
Even better, you won't have to watch him eat the "tasteless brown lump[s] of chewy congealed slime."
Of course, what you could do is throw the jars out while he's in Japan and claim the power went out while he was away and you lost everything in the fridge.
Ummm...me thinks I remember reading something about food snobbery (didn't you take your own food somewhere?;)) so I think you come to it honest....ok...I'm ducking now!!!
hehehe...joking aside...that does sound frustrating. I have "kitchen/food" issues w/ my mom but it's more of the she might infect us w/ salmonela variety...the woman is insane...will leave food out a whole day and the feed it to us!LOL!
BTW, a few years back I thought all tea was well...tea. I dared ask a friend for chamomille tea and got a lecture about the origin of tea and ummm....she gave me green tea because she only keeps "REAL" tea in her kitchen. I'm going to tell her about your dad's "junk tea" comment...she'll get a kick out of it and I might just start using it too...ok...I'm really ducking now...
Oh no - it sounds like you are in a bind, with the mushrooms. I'm would have been so angry about the tea!
My father-in-law has a habit of throwing things/"junk" away when people aren't around to stop him. The worst was when, years ago, he gave away his daughter's kitten when she was away at school. :(
He is usually pretty manageable, though. With him, a lot of the time it is just talk. I hear the words, my brain starts to panic, but it is usually just talk. Like the time he visited the house we had just bought, wasn't happy with the muddy lawn, and said, "We should pave over this whole lawn." Then he turned to look at the living room, and said, "We should move this radiator to this other wall." Luckily I stayed quiet! He didn't mention either subject again.
Or maybe you could just go for it, throw them out (or all but one), and when he notices it shout, "I THREW AWAY YOUR JUNK MUSHROOMS!!! IF YOU WANT TO KEEP THIS CRAP THEN GET YOUR OWN MINI-FRIDGE IN THE GARAGE!!!!!" etc. ;)
"I THREW AWAY YOUR JUNK MUSHROOMS!!!" That's hilarious to contemplate :-)
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