The Essence of Cow

I think my dad is legitimately convinced that there's going to be an apocalypse sometime in the near future and we're all going to revert to caveman behavior or something, because he always says that if it happens, he'll be prepared. He vacuum packs and freezes any food that he doesn't eat with his beloved Foodsaver. Our freezer is stuffed with frozen cabbage stew, steaks, burgers, French toast from New Years, "Bacon Explosion" (look it up), and pretty much anything else you can think of.

One day I had a friend over and he just happened to be melting down all the old food to make room for new food, and he was piling the disgusting recently-thawed food in a large bowl. My friend asked him what it was. "Dinner," he replied, "We're having leftover surprise." I had to assure her that he was just kidding and we were actually ordering a pizza.

Here are some pictures of some duck-liver-mushroom-potato-sauce thing he made the other day, frozen and then vacuumed:

While he was making this, apparently he used some sort of beef flavoring. He called it "the essence of cow". The contents of the jar looked strikingly similar to tar or asphalt. He convinced me to smell his cow-in-a-jar, insisting that it was absolutely wonderful. I don't know why I did it. I don't even like steak. What I smelled in that jar had to be the most revolting, horrible smell that will ever trespass through my nostrils. It smelled like a thousand dirty cows had crammed themselves into this little glass jar and died, leaving their rotting flesh to ferment and decompose. I nearly barfed. If anything looks or smells like this, it can't be good:

Stay away from this at all costs.

Yesterday I noticed that we still had an extremely large squash that our neighbors had given us a few weeks ago. Obviously, no one was going to eat it. Things tend to go unnoticed in our house for long amounts of time, so I decided to see how long it would take for someone to notice if I drew a face on the squash and put it in a vase on the counter. I named it Old Yeller.

The back of the squash reads "Old Yeller- 7/14" so I can keep track of the date. I did this last night, and so far no one has noticed. I'll update this post when someone sees it.

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Darn it. Apparently they noticed it this morning.