Seaweed

[kate_schaefer]

This past Saturday, I went to our regular fishmonger and bought a pint of pickled herring and a pint of seaweed salad, good ingredients for no-cooking summer meals. The seaweed salad was frozen, so I put it in the refrigerator to defrost at its leisure.

On Sunday, I took out the pickled herring and seaweed salad for lunch. I put a few pieces of pickled herring on a plate. I opened the seaweed salad container, noticing as I did so that the seaweed salad looked a bit darker than usual, and that it had a crumpled piece of cellophane under the lid, somewhat obscuring the salad itself. I took the piece of cellophane off and realized that I didn't have a pint of seaweed salad.

I had a pint of caviar.

I closed up the caviar and put it back in the refrigerator. The fishmonger is closed on Sunday, so there was nothing I could do about it right then. I cut up some tomatoes for lunch and thought about the caviar. Could they take it back after I'd opened it? Could I afford to pay the difference in price? I Bingled caviar prices and was glad I hadn't touched the caviar itself. Surely this must be the cheapest caviar; surely if it were really good caviar, it wouldn't have been stored in an unlabeled container. Should I say nothing and take it to a party?

I don't like caviar, I do like my fishmonger, and I prefer to think of myself as a relatively decent and honest human being, so this morning I called them and returned the caviar. They thanked me profusely. They gave me the seaweed salad I'd wanted in the first place and a bonus piece of smoked salmon. They told me the retail value of the caviar: over $500. Not the very cheapest caviar, then.

I'm really glad I don't much care for caviar.

Comments

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

Escargot are on the chewy side regardless of quality and preparation, so if you dislike that texture, you probably would have hated them.

I rather suspect that the pint was a bulk container from which smaller amounts would have been sold, because few people buy the stuff a pint at a time. So the fact that the caviar had been opened would have been less of an issue than how it had been stored. Seems as though it was refrigerated except in transit.

I love caviar and would have had to return the pint or pay for it.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I kept the caviar refrigerated even in transit, actually. Since it's an expensive food that I wouldn't normally buy, I treated it like an uninvited houseguest whom I did not wish to offend in any way.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Bulk container - yes, that makes sense, considering, Kate lives in a nice neighborhood, but she'd have to be a couple miles to the east, or across the lake altogether, before she'd be among people likely to drop $500 at the fishmonger's for a retail pint of caviar.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I suspect I have neighbors who might buy substantial quantities of caviar for parties, but they're not the neighbors I know well. They're the neighbors who live in monster houses built on the foundations of the adequate small craftsman houses that used to be there.

If someone had told me twenty years ago that I'd be one of the downscale inhabitants of a gentrifying neighborhood, I would have scoffed.