Cookout Stories 2009 Vol. 3

As you know by now, we were up there in Maine for two full days and a couple of half days around them. This time, I'll go over a lot of the food we ended up eating over the course of the two full days as the last half day (morning) and the trip back to Hartford can probably be it's own volume of stories.

Canuck vs. "Fine China"

Friday morning, I was poked and prodded out of bed by Kay. Normally this isn't news except she F***ING WAITED UNTIL EVERYONE ELSE HAD THEIR BREAKFAST UNTIL SHE WOKE ME UP. NICE JOB TAKING CARE OF YOUR MAN THERE! I get downstairs to find everyone else out on the back deck happily eating their home made french toast, home made strawberry cream cheese covered with fresh strawberries and syrup along with their sides of bacon.

I go over the counter to get my breakfast and am handed a plate by her mother with everything they have (the last of it I might add) except for...

...the bacon.

I knew who was responsible for this travesty and he was out on the back porch trying to figure out how to use plastic eating utensils without breaking them. You'd think as cold as it is in Canada, being careful with plastic would be about as second nature as not eating yellow snow, but Canuck had his issues....breaking I think a grand total of 4 forks trying to cut things like...french toast.

Anyway, big point of this is that the breakfast was awesome despite the fact I didn't get any bacon, but that was to be expected since we had Canuck there wrapping everything he was eating in bacon and smothering that with a side of bacon itself.

Grandmother vs. Qtipus

We start Saturday morning off with the Donut Alarm. It's this alarm that goes off any time Kay's grandmother makes her home made donuts. It's silent and exists only in the head of her family, but I swear they all know when she does it w/o her having to say a word. If you share any DNA with this family, you just know when the donuts have been made and try to find your way there before they're all eaten.

After getting dragged out of bed by Kay, I was informed the donuts were ready.

I have to admit. When I visit up there, I always enjoy visiting her grandmother. Her mom and dad are awesome, but her grandmother loves to argue with me and give in to Kay's whining. Plus the donuts are freaking awesome. So the thought of going down there to jostle around with her grandmother plus eat some tasty breakfast treats is always something to look forward to.

Upon our arrival, her entire family is there. Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, siblings...hell I think there were even people from a yard sale her grandmother wanted to go to there eating too. I'm telling you...that Donut Alarm is real.

And we were actually up early...like 7:30AM early...how in the hell did we get beaten to the donuts. Her grandmother makes plenty though...except when Kay's brother is around (Kay's brother is appropriately, for this story, a police officer).

While we're all chowing down on donuts, I decided to pick the fight I normally pick with her grandmother while I'm there. Mainly cause it's an amusing fight and the rest of the crew is there to finally see it. Y'see...the reason I pick this fight isn't to actually stake claim to the favorite grandchild status (which I am). It's because this fight somehow causes Kay to revert to a 4 year old mentality and start whining about things like:

"Nana tell him he's not the favorite grandchild!"
(My Kaylea is a spoiled princess, you better start treating her like one!)

...this is followed by getting a pair of 40-year age gapped tongues stuck out at me.

"He's under the delusion that I actually want a ring!"
(She does want one and you better get her one!)

The best parts are when she starts talking about grandbabies. She likes to lay the guilt trip on thick to Kay. "I'm not getting any younger and we don't get to see the great-grandchild we have!" I keep trying to tell her that Kay's preggers, but she doesn't believe me. It could be that I'm telling her that while laughing as the reason she doesn't, but still, it's fun to start that conversation between Kay and her grandmother.



The Campground

This is where we ended up spending the bulk of our daylight hours. Kay's family owns a plot of land along a different lake than their house is built on. They use this for their camp ground. Here you can see Canuck and Mr. Pun exploring around a bit. Take note of the hammock. Fortunately no pictures were taken of this incident, but let's just say that whoever put that hammock up didn't secure it to one of the trees too good and the end result was Q sprawled out on the ground with the hammock under him.

Take note of how pale all of us are standing in that lake. Also take note of how clear the water is. It's a little hard to tell in that picture, but when Canuck and I got into some kayaks, we could still see the bottom of the lake about 50 yards out.



Pea pod splitting! This is yet another thing to blame Kaylea for on this trip. She whines to her mother "I want peas!" So what does her mother do?

She goes and buys two grocery bags full of peas in pods. I'm not talking plastic grocery bags. I'm talking large, brown, not-tree friendly paper bags full of these things. You can actually see said bag in this picture. It doesn't look as large as I described, but the top of the bag is crumpled.

To top it all off, Kay tried to get out of doing any pea splitting. Wasn't going to happen on my watch. If the guys were there shucking peas, she was gonna park her booty down on that same table and shuck right along with us. I don't know what I said in this picture to crack King Cranky and Canuck up, but it was likely something at Kay's expense.

And Kay gets to go sit in the Chair O' Shame. She got put in this chair because Team MAN defeated Team WOMAN in pea shucking. The men got through their entire bag o' peas despite Kay's Dad turning redcoat on us and helping the women out. That might've had more to do with Kay's mom giving Kay's dad the spock-eye than Kay's Dad's desire to actually help out Team WOMAN though. However any man with balls large enough to wear tighty-whities with various pieces of Fruit of the Loom fruits on the waist can get a pass at least once.

This is the only authorized picture that I can put up on my blog of Kay btw. There are more from this trip, but if I like my anatomy, this is the only picture I'll post. She's got a mystery to keep and all.

All of this work wasn't for naught though. Lunch had us eating hot dogs and burgers as an appetizer. Dinner was served up about a couple hours later consisting of things you normally find at a thanksgiving table. Two whole roasted turkeys, peas, potatos, etc. This is also where we discovered King Cranky Cat is apparently not the cat we thought he was as he isn't too fond of anything other than pizza, hot dogs and burgers. Which brings me to...

King Cranky Stuffed With Meat

Kay's mom must've taken a strong liking to King Cranky. I don't know if it was that award-winning smile...that salt n' pepper hair (I'm balding at 31...KCC is going gray at 27...take THAT old jokes)...the witty personality...or what, but basically if King Cranky demanded it, Kay's mom served it up. For lunch on the first day, after learning Suraph wasn't too fond of what was being served, Suraph got served with a plate containing 4 hot dogs and 4 hamburgers...all of which he nursed down over the course of the rest of the day/night (poor Canuck...).

Same thing happened the next day too. :)

Might've had something to do with King Cranky reminding Kay's family of some member named Travis I have yet to meet.

Moose Ribs

Saturday's lunch (after our schlacking of Odin) consisted of a few "Thanksgiving" leftovers and something I had never eaten before.

See title of this section.

My only previous experience with moose meat of any sort was in the form of some ground moose meat that Kay's mom had fixed for dinner a couple trips prior to this one. Kay turns her nose up at it in typical "Pretty Pretty Princess Ain't Going to Eat Bullwinkle So Fix Me What I Want" fashion.

This was one meal I was looking forward to. Mainly cause it opened the door for more Canadian jokes, but also cause it was something I had never eaten before. As a matter of fact, Kay's family and Yot were the only ones there who had eaten moose before.

I have to say...

...OMFG THAT WAS F***ING TASTY.

F***ING TASTY I SAY.

F***ING TASTY.

It wasn't what I expected. I thought it'd be similar to normal ribs from a cow. In reality, the meat was tougher, stringier and was rather tangy/bitter at the same time in a good way. I made a pig out of myself. These were served up with a side of grilled scallops...which were F***ING TASTY too.

Vanilla Soup

Just as a side note...Kay's Aunt made home made vanilla ice cream...but it melted the second it left the container. So we were forced to brain freeze ourselves in order to keep it from spilling on us.

She's made home made ice cream for me before and she usually makes it with snow that's fallen, but given it was July...yeah no snow. Not even in Maine.

Bean-Hole Beans

Saturday's dinner had this as the main, unique attraction. I have had these before. They're basically beans cooked in a dutch oven (not the type that involves an ass and bed covers) that's buried in a firepit for a day. Here's a picture of said bean-hole. To cook beans in a burning hole, you A) Dig hole, B) Start fire in said hole, C) put dutch oven filled with beans in said hole, and D) Bury, pray it doesn't rain and let cook for 24 hours. These were served various pieces like home made cornbread and hot dogs.

This meal led to some real dutch ovens happening to Kay later that night. :)

These were just the main meals we all ate as a collective group. This doesn't include various snacks and treats her mom made for us while we were trying to come out of our respective food comas. Between home made Key Lime Pies and various other fruit treats (mostly revolving around strawberries), our tummies didn't have much of a chance to recover.