Camping: The Menu

 Night one: Not everyone was there yet, so Matt barbecued hamburgers at our site. After dinner we went to Ben and Melanie's camp for the campfire.

Just after Angus accused Matt of being too bougie to buy Molson Canadian and said "please don't give me an IPA, those taste like ass"

The next morning when I woke up Matt was baking a peach walnut cake over the fire. It was a peach walnut cake rather than a banana walnut cake because he brought a banana cake mix and didn't realize he also needed to bring some banana. I packed up for the beach while he tried to decide when to check the cake's status.

The first look did not display something you would term "appetizing" or "impressive" or even "edible", but when we flipped it over and then lifted it out of the incinerated top it was quite nice, plus we now had a nifty carbon bowl. He brought it to the beach and it was quite a hit. I think the peach was even nicer than the banana would have been.

Night two: Our site. Trying to cook an entire dinner while camping would give me the vapours, so I cook ribs and chicken at home, we grill corn for corn salad (this year I also cooked rotini because it's a LOT of corn to grill when it's just corn), and I made biscuits. 

San asked how you even prepare for cooking for twenty-two people. The first year was trickier, but it's a little easier after you've done it a few times. We counted about three ribs for every person, which meant about seven racks. I browned them in roasters at 450 degrees and then did them low and slow with honey garlic sauce until they're basically fall-off-the-bone - it took a few sessions and I think Matt was fairly relieved when he got to wash the roasters for the last time. I cooked nine chicken breasts in the air fryer with a spice rub and then barbecue sauce for the last couple of minutes, and we took extra barbecue sauce to brush on them when we reheated them over the fire.

We grilled twelve corn cobs and cooked one big package of rotini. I felt like we might need more pasta, but Matt reminded me that I had made dill pickle pasta salad for the cottage a month ago and we had eaten it for four meals and still brought some home, and he was right. I usually make a lime-cilantro dressing that I shake in a jar, but this time I found a recipe online for one in the food processor that also had jalapeno in it, and it was the best one so far. Unfortunately I can't remember where I found it, so that's going to take a bit of searching, but it was like four cups of cilantro, some garlic, some lime juice, a jalapeno and olive oil and I think that's about it. It was green and beautiful. I also made three dozen biscuits.

Last year Matt brought potatoes to bake over the fire, and decided to do it again even though we already had pasta - they make good leftovers for breakfast. 

I made two Costco-margarine-tupperware containers of corn and two of rotini. We only used half that for our dinner, but I brought the rest to a subsequent dinner, and cut the meat off the ribs and brought that and the chicken to the last night's dinner. Probably the least amount of leftovers we've ever had. It is kind of daunting having to cook that much amongst the other camp prep, but it's also really nice to just unbox everything and warm it up the night of our dinner. We have a big Igloo cooler that we plug into the van the whole way there, then add ice to, and everything stays quite frozen until we serve. It's also really nice to only have to host dinner once, and then just show up with plates the rest of the evenings. 

For our drink we did the Caught in the Rain that I made at the cottage. Even the people who professed to be non-tequila drinkers liked it. 

Night three: Walshes site. Marinated grilled chicken breasts (there was soy sauce and brown sugar and I think sesame oil involved, it was yummy), Margot's unbelievably delicious garlic roast potatoes and Michele made a cucumber salad and an Asian cabbage and ramen noodle salad. Also a jug of the Platonic ideal of a margarita. 

Night four: Tony's site with Antayas assisting. Hot and sour soup and firepit pad Thai - I was, not skeptical exactly, but intrigued, but  holy crap it was good (if requiring a superhuman strength level to stir, according to Mark). Then individual pineapple upside down cakes made over the fire (because Tony likes to show us all up) and THEN waffle cones with little marshmallows and skor bits and chocolate chips to foil wrap and also bake over the fire (second dessert - like second breakfast, but different). 

Drinks were a choice between a daiquiri and a Long Island Iced Tea, which features gin, rum, vodka, triple sec, and -- you guessed it -- tequila, with lemon juice and simple syrup and a splash of coke. I was in my thirties before I learned that Long Island Iced Tea isn't actually iced tea, and every time I've tried one it was repugnant, but I have the utmost faith in Tony's mixology skill, so I tried the LIIT, and I honestly I have had drinks with way less alcohol in them that tasted way more alcohol-y. I also told Ben's girlfriend she was pretty and kissed her on the forehead about twenty minutes later, so I won't be in a hurry to try another one.

Night five: Walshes site again, Wardles cooking. Sausages with an array of toppings (I forgot to take a picture until they were nearly gone. There was no picture to illustrate how once they hit the grill we rapidly lost sight of which were mild, which were spicy and which were honey garlic), really amazing instant pot brown beans and dill pickle salad. 

The drink was a callback to the Harvey Wallbanger Night of 2015 - goddamn, that is a palatable drink. 

Dave letting Tony sniff the cap to assess the vintage.

The first two mornings I got out of the tent and Matt handed me a plate with breakfast on it and I ate it. By the third morning I realized I did not remotely need to eat breakfast, just have a sandwich on the beach and then whatever amazing dinner was on offer. Plus various assorted Pringles and cookies.

 Matt remembered that in past years he hasn't gotten the fire going in time and trying to bake twenty potatoes and warm up other stuff while your fire wasn't adequately banked yet was difficult, so he left the beach early and we were ready early if anything. Probably the only oops was that he packed our salt shaker from home instead of just throwing in a box of salt - it was a pepper grinder with a small salt compartment on top, but we never used the pepper grinder part. The salt completely compacted because of the humidity, and by the time we got home the whole thing was rusted and gross and I threw it out. This made me realize that I had kind of been wanting to throw it out for years but didn't have a good reason. I knew Eve would be slightly angry about it because she hates when things from her childhood disappear, but she's mostly over it, and our new salt shaker is simple and cute. 



That is the pepper grinder I took from my childhood home. Why are we so oddly attached to spice containers?

And Then Camping Was Awesome Because of Course It Was

 Aside from missing Eve, this might have been the best camp near-week yet. Weather was really good, nobody got injured or sick, we only got one noise complaint warning (and the people in the next site were even louder, so we were okay). I actually slept the first night, which made it bearable when I couldn't sleep the second night. Angus's air mattress deflated the first night but we had a spare.

We were down three girls plus one girl's girlfriend, but we were up Meghan's boyfriend, who acquitted himself quite well considering he is very much not a camper (same bro, same). It was kind of funny to me realizing how well we all know each other, because in a group of twenty-two I would hear his voice now and then and immediately think "who is that? why don't I know that voice?"

It is fairly hilarious to me that at age thirty I was a confirmed non-camper who swore she would never sleep in a tent again, and at 54 I did five nights on an air mattress quite happily (not that I didn't embrace my bed and my clean toilet passionately when I got home. Metaphorically - I didn't actually physically hug my toilet. That you know of.)

Angus made me wear his bandanna to look more outdoorsy.

Oh, there was one hitch that was unexpected. There are two comfort stations in the campground we were all in. Each one has a men's and women's bathroom with three stalls each and three sinks. There are five showers in the middle. The showers at the comfort station farthest from us were closed until further noticed. Eeek. THEN, two of the showers in the one nearest to us stopped working. So we were down to three showers for an entire very large campground. It was kind of funny how this played out. Sometimes there were lineups at midnight and none at three o'clock because everyone assumed people would be going in the afternoon (Matt says there's a mathematical term for this, I can't find it). Once I showered at two a.m. because we went to the beach after the campfire and laid on our backs looking for shooting stars and my hair was full of sand. There was no lineup but the shower was so gross I almost took out my contacts and committed to walking back to my site blind just so I didn't have to look at the grossness.) I don't shower every day at camp anyway, so it wasn't a huge deal. Eve wouldn't have been thrilled.

As usual, I relished the beautiful simplicity of waking up, washing up, making sandwiches and packing the beach bag, spending the day reading and talking and swimming, going to dinner, sitting around the campfire talking and listening to music and laughing, washing up clumsily in the dark, and lying in the tent listening to the night. Last year was the first time we made it past four nights, and this time I felt like I could have done one or two more (I have the double-height air mattress now - total game-changer. I used to feel like getting off my air mattress and out of the tent cost me years' worth of dignity.)

I am generally considered the group photo journalist, which used to mean that some people would pretend to be annoyed at being photographed and then everyone would ask for the pictures. Now everyone just knows to either pose or go about their business fake candidly, and then everyone gets all the pictures. Last year I felt like I lagged in  my duties a bit, so this year I went hard. Once I tagged everyone in all the Facebook posts, other people's friends got involved in the comments and it was quite entertaining. An old school friend of Matt's asked if we were at a family reunion. Which, no, but also yes, you know? 

I will now describe our week in a series of tediously detailed posts because I want to and you can't stop me. 

Tell me about your weeks back in the real world with functioning plumbing and electric lights and ovens. Was it glorious? Did you feel a little TOO clean? 

Camp Prepping While Anxious

 I am trying really hard not to lose it, but I am so jumpy and my stomach is so heavy, FOR NO REASON AT ALL. We're in really good shape. I just finished the third of three batches of biscuits, ribs and chicken for 22 are in the freezer (some people cook at camp, but I can't do that, so I cook at home and we do our dinner one of the first nights there). I just have to heat up and then decant my pineapple simple syrup and the food is done. And my hands are still a little bit functional - thanks to the really great super-sharp knives I bought on prime day after the last time I tried to slice the skin off a pork roast and destroyed my hand for four days - and my back is bad but not terrible. That's better than many years. Now we just have to get there and set everything up and there, alas, lies the rub.

Matt convinced me not to cook more rotini for the rotini and grilled corn salad. We always end up with too much food, and I said merrily "oh well, if this is the year we run out, it will be a good story! And then I'd have to kill myself." Matt said "well, at least you have new knives. Seppuku was never so easy". 

My friend Janet asked me to bring her a book for the beach and I am crumbling under the pressure. I started surveying my shelves to find a book for Janet, look for a couple of books I wanted to give Eve, and see if I did have a copy of I Capture the Castle, even though I won't be home in time for the first of Engie's CBBC posts on Monday. I couldn't find I Capture the Castle, which maybe I never had. I couldn't find Mean Boy by Lynn Coady or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon for Eve, which I absolutely had copies of. I have a nicely compact stack of about twelve books for Janet to choose from. I've asked Matt if we can maybe leave a tent at home so I can bring more books. 

I have to pack the super-bright camping lantern which, during the year, I commandeer to help paint my toenails. At this point my eyesight is so bad I was sort of painting my entire foot then trying to wipe off everything that wasn't toenail. Then I discovered that a lantern that emits a billion lumens makes it a lot easier, and it only takes an hour or two to blink away the afterimage.

Yesterday, partly in an effort to distract myself from camping jitters and partly because we'd been planning to do it sometime anyway, Eve and I had a bookstore and ice cream date. Someone in Ottawa, I can't remember who, had told me about this great used bookstore in Stittsville. It's in an unprepossessing plaza but inside is charming and well organized. As we were parking, the people in the parking spot next to us were coming back to their car - a husky dad in a plaid shirt and two black-clad emo tweens. Eve was transported by the juxtaposition and the emo skills of the kids:  "omg, little queen is glaring at me, I love it so much." Eve found a Miriam Toews she hasn't read yet and I found a few other things. i will definitely be returning (they did not have I Capture the Castle, I checked).

 Then we went to my friend Nat's favourite bookstore The Spaniel's Tale - also super cute. I bought a book for my niece that I will not name for now because I'm not entirely sure she won't see this post. 

The Merry Dairy is the best ice cream place for Eve because they have multiple delicious vegan flavours. We got cones and then went back in to pick up the stuff we'd pre-ordered. We went to the cash register, which I had done before, and then the teenaged boy at the counter said "oh, you just go around to the side window, ring the bell if no one's there." So we did, but the sign there said it didn't open until four, and it was only one. We rang the bell, and were about to go back in when a woman walking her dog called from across the street "oh, that doesn't open until four". We told her we'd been instructed to go there but were willing to go back in. She came over and said "oh, that was Aidan, he usually washes dishes", and she opened the window and lifted the shade and called a girl over to get our order. We walked away grateful but confused. Eve said "was that the owner of the Merry Dairy? Was she just trying to walk her dog and we made her clock in? I hope Aidan doesn't get in trouble."

In the evening I went into her room to give her a hug, and she showed me something on her computer and we talked. I walked back to my room, and then back to her room, and said "I came in here to hug you" and she said "you did, but you can again", and then when I hugged her and rested my head on her head I said "oh, I remember now" and she laughed really hard. I really, really love her, even when she's gently mocking me. Now I'm going to finish my pineapple syrup, go do some yoga in an effort to mitigate the effects of five upcoming nights on an air mattress, and try to chill the fuck out. 

Five For Friday

 1. ANGUS IS HOME. For a little bit, before he moves SUPER FAR AWAY, let's be in denial about that part. He's going to come camping to Sandbanks with us, which is good because Eve is not, for I think the first time since we started, and I think I would be sad to be there completely offspring-less. Angus loves camping in a way that Eve doesn't, which is totally fair because she has skin issues and gut issues that are invariably triggered by something at some point, and she's a trooper about it, but she loves the beach and the water. Often a group of us will go down to the beach at night and look at the stars and sit in the sand and maybe swim. One time a few years ago we did this and I walked up to Angus and he was being quiet and contemplative and saying this felt very therapeutic, and then Eve ran between us with her head down and her hands in her pockets, making a NEER NEER NEER NEER siren noise, which is kind of a perfect representation of their respective personalities.

Today we went to see Twisters, maintaining my tradition of going to see whatever dumb movie my kids want to see when both my kids are home. It was only moderately stupid. A couple of weeks ago I saw a very disappointing horror movie with Collette (HI COLLETTE) and Janet (HI JANET) - I am quite annoyed with the reviewers who made it sound like it should be as good as Hereditary when friends, it was NO Hereditary. Sounded cool. Started cool. Went well until about two-thirds through, when it because extremely clunky and over-explainy and who-cares-ish. Kiernan Shipka had a small but incredibly effective part in it. Not unlike her part in Twisters, which, I don't know, does that mean something?

2. The time for camping is nigh upon us, and I am feeling my usual mix of excitement and apprehension. Matt is demonstrating his usual 'calm down, it will all be fine' vibe, and I'm trying not to yell WHAT ABOUT THAT ONE YEAR WE WENT WITHOUT THE AIR MATTRESS PUMP, while making extra sure that 'air mattress pump' is on the list. This weekend I will do the big grocery shop and Monday to Wednesday I will organize food and cook ribs and chicken and corn for twenty-two people and freeze it all and assemble towels for various purposes and make more pineapple simple syrup - oops, gotta add pineapple to the list, thanks for that - so I can make a giant jug of Caught In the Rains. 

Speaking of, I had my yearly Ottawa Market date with my friend Janis. We live two blocks apart, and we used to see each other constantly because Angus went to school with her son and then Eve became good friends with her daughter even though Eve is younger, and then Matt became good friends with her husband and they were the perfect friend family. Then the kids got older and, modern life being being what it is, we rarely see each other during the year now, but we never miss our yearly date to go and wander around the Byward Market and do a little shopping (our favourite stores are Zone and Paper/Papier) and have lunch and fill each other in on the previous year. Then we buy corn and berries and peaches at the farm stall before heading home. Covid summer we just did it in her back yard six feet apart, with takeout.

I had just told her about finding out that coconut tequila was a thing at my birthday dinner (not bitter at all that Nicole knew and didn't tell me, I'm sure she had her reasons, it's fine, hmph). Then we GOT caught in the rain, so our course of action seemed clear.

3. This past weekend there were plans that fell through, so Margot and Michael invited anyone who was at loose ends to come to their cottage again because MARGOT AND MICHAEL ARE AWESOME. It was a much smaller group. Eve came this time after not having been there for many years, and was the only not-old person. She is very good at doing her own thing, read most of a book, did some kayaking ("do they still have those open kayaks? Because I fuck with those open kayaks"). 

We went smaller with the food and while the big group stuff is always super fun, it's nice to have a chiller vibe sometimes.

For the most part.

4. Sunday we went down to the water, which, you may recall (probably not) entails a lengthy, precipitous, 13-storey switchback trail, for which we generally pack everything we need so as not to make multiple trips, for obvious reasons (aside from the athletic people, hmph). Except Margot went back up to say goodbye to Janet and Dave and then brought lunch and drinks down for everyone, including a little cutting board for the bagels, which, come on, Margot IS AWESOME.

5. I know technically that last thing should have been part of number three, but I wasn't sure I had enough things to get to five. Hmmmmmmmmm. Oh! I just finished a really good book. Do you remember a few years ago there was a black man in Central Park who asked a white woman to leash her dog, and she said she was going to call the police and tell them a black man was threatening her life? The man was Christian Cooper, and he was in Central Park because he is an avid bird-watcher. He's also gay, and worked at Marvel at one point, and was instrumental in one of the first gay superhero storylines. He's written a book called Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World, and my friend Carolyn put it on our book club list for next year. I got it from the library, and fifty pages in I was so smitten I returned the library copy and bought my own. Sometimes people have something happen to them that makes them somewhat of a Phenomenon, and sometimes those people get book deals, and sometimes I read those books and think "you would not have written a book and had it published had that one thing not happened to you, and that would not have been a loss to the literary world", but in my opinion this time it was a fortuitous and fortunate thing that Christian Cooper was led to write a book - he is fascinating, articulate, insightful, analytical, self-aware and compassionate, and I loved this book.

Morning Shower or Night Shower?

 Do you need to shower every day? Do you shower in the morning or at night? I don't want to start a whole thing like I kind of did with the top-sheet-or-not thing, but I find it interesting.

When I was old enough to shower independently, I always needed to shower in the morning. I would shower even if I was just going out to suntan with a friend and my dad would say that's super dumb, you're showering off the skin barrier that might prevent a sunburn, and he was right but dude, we were oiling up with basically barbecue sauce at that time, so I was undeterred.

I can't remember when I started needing to shower at night (AS WELL AS in the morning, not instead of). I think my heat regulation problems started in my early twenties, so maybe then? The night time shower was quick, basically a rinse off, but I couldn't get into bed without it. 

With my sleep issues, getting up early was even more painful when I had to shower and wash my hair. My hair was oily, though, so skipping it wasn't really great for not feeling gross during the day. My mom went through an annoying stage when I was in high school where she read that if you stopped washing your hair so much it would stop producing oil, and started badgering me to only wash it ever second day. My sister claims that this kind of thing only works with different hair from ours anyway, but I was not interested in testing the theory either way. I fought her until she gave up. 

As I've aged and my hair has gotten slightly less oily, and I've discovered dry shampoo, I've become pretty comfortable with getting up in the morning and just washing my face, since I've showered just before bed. I can go to work, run errands, work out (yes, I did used to shower before going to work out - so dumb), and then shower when I get home (okay, I will still have to shower right before bed, so this isn't a HUGE improvement, but still).

Eve has evolved naturally into showering after dinner, which she's done since she started showering on her own. She's never showered in the morning and has no issues with this. Angus usually showers in the morning unless he's off early, and then he needs to shower after the inevitable workout. For this reason, sharing a bathroom was never an issue for them like it sometimes was for me and my sister.

On the subject of washing stuff, I recently noticed in pictures that one of my eyelids looked slightly swollen. When I thought about it, I realized I don't really 'wash' my eyes. Is that weird? If I'm wearing mascara (not often) I used makeup removed, then kind of rinse off the makeup remover. If I'm not, I think I just kind of bypass my eyes. My eyes are sensitive, and I have to use eyedrops to be able to wear contacts at this point, and I don't like the idea of soap getting in them, but suddenly thinking about how I've been neglecting them in my otherwise quite compulsive - one might say obsessive - cleanliness routine (showering once a day AT LEAST: washing my hands if one even brushes against a garbage can or toilet seat lid: using soap on my cooch, pH balance be damned) kind of icked me out. I got some tea tree eye cleansing towelettes and started using them every second day or so, and running the facecloth I use every night gently over my eyes when I didn't use them. The swelling seems to have gone down, if not the crows feet. 

OH, and while we're at it, facecloth for face or just hands? I used to be only hands, but when my acne was fairly bad I wondered if the slight exfoliating motion of a facecloth might help, and it seemed to. But (see: obsessive) I have to use a clean facecloth every night, so I go through facecloths at a tremendous rate. 

I was getting nervous at not posting in a long time and not feeling up to loading a bunch of pictures, so I thought I would do a 'weird things I think about sometimes' post. I am feeling now like I might have chosen poorly, yet alas, here we are. 

Summertime and the Livin' is Wonky

 I have been feeling panicky about how long it's been since I blogged, which is silly and I don't like it. I will not belabour the subject.

End of school year! Start of summer!

Last year I was so utterly exhausted and enervated at the end of the school year that the thought of packing up and heading to our friends' cottage for Canada Day weekend made me weep (I know - what an ingrate). I forced myself, of course - Matt is so good at assuring me that I will feel better when I get there and I almost invariably do. And it was fantastic! Remember the hose shower? Wait, I can't link to the hose shower post because I can't find it, which is extremely weird because I have a very clear memory of writing it and people commenting on it. (Margot and Michael's cottage is at the top of a mountain (sort of) and you have to go down a steep switchbacky trail to get to the water and then back up again and it is VERY DIFFICULT for those of us who are not in tip-top shape, and last year a few of us realized there was a hose on the lower deck, so started a "Hose shower" thing on our way up to shower off the exertion and fear sweat, and, well, you can imagine the "let's get these hoes showered" and "into the shower with you, hoes!" hilarity that ensued.)

This year I am maxed out on one antidepressant because last year was so rough, and it has helped quite a bit. I was fine packing up and cooking a bunch of stuff until the night before, when I briefly didn't want to go, but I'm a socially-weird introvert, so it has to happen at LEAST once.

The weather wasn't idyllic, but it was all great anyway. The cottage has a huge screened-in room on one end, so even when everyone has to be inside and there's 15 of us, it's not squishy. People play ping-pong or board games or read or sit around talking or prepare food and it's very nice.

Or, you know, fight each other for the privilege of crushing ice with a mallet

The day we got there was warm but drizzly. The next day was clearer but windy and cold - I went in the water because once I went down that twenty-minute precipitous peril of a trail there was no way I wasn't swimming, but mostly we sat on the windy dock and watched the clouds. Monday was perfect and we swam and sunned and made dinner before heading home.

Cold

Matt and I brought our tent to sleep in. The first night I took a sleeping pill (just an over-the-counter) because I always have trouble sleeping the first night away anywhere. This was a mistake. I had restless legs all night, I had to get up to pee three times before I fell asleep, which was after it was already getting light. But then I slept in a few hours so it was okay. The second night was better, but my air mattress didn't feel as firm as it did camping last year, so we need to figure that out before camping this year because I NEED the magic of my double-height air mattress to be in full effect.

I made the drink from my birthday weekend that inspired me to buy coconut tequila and it went over really well. We paired it with Tony's pineapple upside-down cake. When I tried to google how to make the drink I could only come up with a coconut margarita, and I didn't want to use coconut cream. I then realized I could google the restaurant, look at the menu, see the ingredients of the drink and then look up cocktail proportions. Isn't it great when you start off so dumb that then figuring out something incredibly simple makes you feel like a genius? 

Tony made hurricanes. These went over...well, they went over like something that requires helmet and padding, as Collette said (HI COLLETTE). Some people said they could taste the tropical juices. Most people said they got a rum forward, hint of rum, top notes of rum, with a finishing rum bouquet. Thank goodness we only had one each, aside from whoever stole Michael's (regret to inform you that we cannot release any names while the investigation is ongoing).

Due preparations for the brisket.

The gracious hosts.

Killer sunset.

Canada Day

Sort of incognito, don't want to be Canadian too loudly

The heartbreaking optimism of being one switchback down the trail.