Royal Oak is just what they happened to have at the only Home Depot near the fishing spot. It's a fine charcoal, but not what I use at home. I generally use charcoal made from compressed, extruded coconut shells. Coconut charcoal gives off very little smoke or smoke flavor and lets your bbq'ed meat soak up whatever smoke wood you chose to use. Also, I enjoy saying, "compressed, extruded coconut." Generally though, Home Depot has pretty much everything you need to make decent bbq.

As far as odd Russian shit goes, my Dad has been inviting this younger married chick down recently to come fish with us. Nothing kinky is going on, she's loyal to her husband and he even comes to fish sometimes. But, we always give her the raw salmon eggs that we get when we fillet the fish. They cure them with just salt and then later eat them on top of buttered toast. She gave me a bag of the cured eggs, but I just ended up throwing them out. I couldn't bring myself to eat them.