An Ode to My Tank

One of the things about living on the side of a mountain is the fact that our "driveway" is twenty-some kilometers of forest service roads. Otherwise known as backroads or... trails, even. Now, most of our road is fairly well maintained, but this year weather conditions have perfected the glossywindinglugetrack that we drive far too often. I drove it today, in fact, and we can add "winter driving" to my list of "I can do that", under the classification of "Unsatisfactory".

Cooking for hoards of hungry helpers means stocking up with serious supplies. Our nearest grocery superstore is 1.5 hours away, so we order large-quantity groceries from a company called Sysco. My good pal, the Sysco Guy, gives us a call on his cell (not while he's driving! that's illegal now!) and I caroom down the driveway to meet him on the highway and receive my shipment. Normally, that's how it goes down.

But there's this one corner, just a lovely curvy corner of ice with deeeeeeep steeeep ditches. And those ditches just looked so appealing to my Suburban today that she dove right in, even though I read her thoughts and let out a gut-wrenching "NNNNOOOOOO!!!!". We had left a little early, so the kids and I proceeded to break piles of pine boughs and shove them under the tires, but we only succeeded in carving a series of tunnels through the knee-deep snow. I abandoned my inadequate shoes and pulled on Hubby's big rubber boots, and with a dollar-store army knife worked at whittling off a fallen tree that was threatening to crease a huge dent in the newly-repaired side panels of the truck. The kids hauled more branches and I just kept praying...

Apparently God had other plans for us today, because on our final escape attempt there was a sudden stop accompanied by a resounding "clunk" and I knew we were going no farther. Somewhere in that morass of branches, spun-up gravel and ice crystals there was a rock, and it had decided to hold fast to the tender underbelly of our beloved 'Burban. We locked up and decided to take the Heel Toe Express back up to camp.

Well, the story doesn't have a sad ending - not far along we flagged down my new best friend The Granite Guy, who'd been at camp measuring for our new countertops. He drove us back home and I braced myself for a good ribbing. Our brandnewshiny tractor pulled the 'Burban out with ease. The little grocery/convenience store/gas station in our community accepted delivery of my Sysco order, and the Sysco Guy is reported to have said "When she called and said she was in the ditch, my first thought was: thank goodness she drives a tank!"

This is only the second time in four years that my 'Burban has turned on me and left me looking foolish off the side of our road; not bad really, considering how many trips down that road we make. And she still cradled that big food order all the way home, not even breaking an egg. What can I say? I love my truck.

The Cream Pie Curse

How many times have I seen something... at a store, a craft sale, on tv... and thought -"yeah, I can do that."? Too many. It's that mentality that has me currently swimming in deep waters. Or drowning. And blogging about it.

It's nearly 9am, I have half an hour before Coffee Time. At the moment I'm cooking for a construction crew of 10 - one of which is my husband. They'll want coffee and cookies soon, which I'll take over to the worksite so I can spy on their progress. From my "office" window I can see the whole place - a forest education camp on a mountain in the middle of nowhere. A pile of construction sand protected from the snow with a giant orange tarp. Hubby cruising on his new tractor. Half-demolished cabins and buildings-in-progress. Exciting times around here.

So, a list of the things I thought "I Can Do That" about, and am presently attempting:

• cooking professionally
• cake decorating
• designing crochet patterns
• painting murals
• homeschooling
• carving a totem pole
• greenhouse gardening
• landscape designing
• interior decorating
• running a Kids' Club
• writing music
• blogging

I'm sure this list will grow with time. I must add that not everything is coming along successfully... I'm on my third totem pole attempt, my greenhouse is full of dead plants, and right now one child is diligently working on school while the other is dozing blissfully. Or maybe reading in bed. I haven't actually checked. So add "parenting" to the list, under the category of "may or may not be doing adequately".

As far as the cooking goes - that all started 4 years ago when we first moved up here. My husband was hired as the Caretaker and I tagged along and looked for stuff I could do. The camp cook at that time was looking for a couple of days off, so I said "I can do that!" and jumped right in, feeding up to 80 camp kids at a time. Since then, I've cooked for various groups; the University of Calgary geology class; Boy Scouts; a teen addictions councelling group; even a sustainable-living activist group who wanted the 100-mile diet. And I'll tell ya, 100 miles from here gets you... nowhere. I may have stretched the boundaries on that menu, a bit.

So now our camp has a bigfatjuicy government grant to rebuild and remodel, so I'm cooking part time for the construction crew. It's been an all-new experience, an eye-opening shocker, at times. Like watching 10 men devour 10 quarts of chili and 4 dozen fresh-baked buns. Then cream pies for afters. Ah yes, the cream pies.

Did I mention that my family suffers from a cream pie curse? Wait - I have to put coffee on...

Ok, coffee's perking merrily.

I have a vivid mental picture from childhood - when my mom was cooking for a harvesting crew one hot summer. We had a pickup with a camper on the back, which we filled with hearty fare and drove out to the field to feed the masses. One day mama made beatiful banana cream pies heaping with heavy whipped cream and we just knew the men would be thrilled to see them. We rocked gently over the furrows in the field, and as we arrived the grain trucks and combines pulled up close like eager puppies to a bowl of gravy. Flinging open the camper door with a flourish we were horrified to see a pale puddle of melted cream flowing across the counter. A lesson in the importance of refridgeration in the maintenance of healthy cream pies.

So this week I tried my hand at cream pies - one coconut, one banana - my first ever. Homemade crust, crisp and flaky in the pans. Carefully stirred and thickened vanilla custard - no powdered junk in my kitchen. The coconut pie was topped with meringue and and doused liberally with toasted coconut... the banana pie was piped in a swirling mass of whipped cream. And it was good. Remembering the Melted Pie Fiasco, I transferred the banana pie to the fridge. Well, tried to. You see, part of our camp facelift has involved complete deconstruction of our walk-in cooler in the commercial kitchen. So I've been doing all this cooking out of my 800 square foot cabin, with my tiny tiny kitchen. And I've got stacks of cans, boxes of produce, and carts of baking supplies lined up and piled up in every spare inch of my house. Including a week's worth of meat defrosting in my over-crowded fridge. So as I shifted the pork to make room for the pie, the crazy pan leaped out of my hand and threw itself, kamikaze-style, against the bottom rack of the fridge. Half the pie clung to the pan, half lay face-down on the bottom shelf. I sat right down on the floor, pork-in-lap, to have a good cry. But my kids are troopers - at my Gasp!and-waaaaail they rushed over and took charge. One got a wet cloth, one patted my shoulder and said "you could scrape it back into the pan - no-one would ever know!" Out of the mouth of babes. With some artful patching, and a little extra leftover whipped cream for good measure, the pie was resurrected and dessert was saved!

But I'm through with cream pies!!