Now, one part of the German transition is that I can't take any food with me, so I decided it would be a good idea to start getting rid of stuff; I took stock of the kitchen and decided that, although the freezer and pantry still had a lot of stuff that looked viable and tasty, the refrigerator was about 40% condiments, 20% booze, 15% rotten food, and about 5% non-booze stuff that I actually wanted. I took the liberty of putting all of the stuff to be kept on the top shelf of the fridge, then wrote Eliana a note saying I wanted to start getting rid of my food, and could she please throw out all the food beneath the jar of water?
Later that day, Eliana called me and said she was sick, and would I mind if she came by on Monday? That coincided nicely with an impromptu get-together that I hosted on Saturday, so I thought it was optimal.
On Sunday, I had a particularly nasty (and, I thought, somewhat undeserved) hangover, and cooked myself a massive Mac & Cheese with everything from the pantry that looked like it might go well with Mac & Cheese. The resulting glop was delicious and huge - I ate about half of it, then put the other half in a tupperware, taking care to place it on the top shelf, above the jar of water.
So, you can guess where this is going: I came home today, opened the refrigerator in anticipation of my M&C glop (cuz you know that shit is even better when reheated the second day), and saw this. Horrors!
Now, of course I can point out the obvious - she somehow interpreted "can you please throw away all the food below the water jug in the refrigerator" as "please throw away all food in the apartment". Perhaps my Portuguese is worse than I thought - remind me to NEVER hire a Brazilian exterminator, lest I inadvertently have all the pets on our block executed.
What I find more curious, however, is what she opted to leave behind:
- All the booze (which was kind of her)
- The jar of water (which, remember, was meant to be used as a reference marker for what should be kept and what should be tossed). Note that the jar of water is in the same place I left it.
- Claudia's cold mask (in the freezer, useful for administering or relieving a headache)
- A half-eaten pint of Haagen-Dazs acai berry sorbet
- A box of durian popsicles. Words cannot describe the foulness that is durian. Many people have their own particularly colorful descriptions - the image it brings forth to my mind is a sweet Maui onion that has been forgotten in a gym locker, in a tropical place, surrounded by sweaty gym socks, and left there for a couple of months. There's definitely a sweetness and a hint that maybe there could have been something good here at one point, but it's overwhelmed by the funk. Anyway, continuing the list...
- A package of hot dog rolls. I'm actually unsure as to where these came from - I'm relatively sure it wasn't the refrigerator, but that's where they are now
- A small chunk of goiabada (a Brazilian sweet made from guava - it's kind of like a really, really think fruit roll-up). I should note that there was also an unopened package of goiabada in the side shelf of the fridge which is gone. That chunk of goiabada has been in the fridge since (I think) the last time Clau and I went to Brazil, which I believe was for Christmas last year. Apparantly it had been there for so long that Eliana thought it was part of the fridge, or perhaps a particularly colorful accessory.
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