I'm It - Again!

I don't know about this whole tagging meme thing - it seems fishily like a chain letter, and yet - for the moment - it's such fun.

In any case, I've been remiss, as Suburban invented a Tag and hit me with it earlier this week. Now this morning I have another one waiting, from Peenee. Will it never end? But, such is my good WASP guilt, I've done them both. Suburban first:

• Go to your refrigerator, and describe the contents in the style of a movie tag line;


• Locate the least popular condiment in and tell us what it is;


• Name the most embarrasing thing in your fridge / freezer and justify its presence there.

The context for my response is that, children, unless you've lived in a dry country with a still-developing retail industry, you haven't walked in my shoes. On top of that, Mr. Muscato and I were badly scarred by two years in Africa, where you and, it seemed, every other foreigner in town spent all day Saturday combing what passed for "supermarkets" for things like sugar, clean flour, and - that holy of holies - butter.

Let's just we say stock up.

So:

• Diet Coke and Clotted Cream: A Different Kind of Love Story!


• Faseekh. It's a kind of half-rotted salted fish - "a semi-putrid form of salted and dried Grey Mullet," according to one authority, who adds that it is known for its "distinctive stench." Not, I suppose, technically a condiment, but it's in the fridge, and it's every bit as appetizing as it sounds. What can I say? Egyptians love it, and he did go two years without it for me.


• My name is Muscato, and I have six bottles of Absolut in my freezer. See justification above - it's a dry country, darlings, and you never know where your next one is coming from!

Now, I'm going to fudge a little, because one of the points of tagging, I know, is to pass it on, like, indeed, a chain letter, or the brandied-fruit cult that my mother got involved in in the seventies (it needed a starter, kind of like sour dough, and you always had to be passing part of the batch on, and, oh, I don't really remember, I just can't get the horror of it out of my head...). Be that as it may, and for reasons shortly to be revealed, life at the Café is rather stressy - but in a good way, darlings - at the moment.

So I'm going to finish up tagging and choose one lucky recipient, who can decide whether Suburban's or Peenee's tag sounds more appealing. Wait and see.