What I eat, apparently

I have returned from a long hard journey, the sort of quest where peeing in the middle of the night is an ordeal and mattresses are a far away fantasy. Indeed, this is the joy of camping. What’s really joyous about camping, however, is the fact that when you’re dead tired from hiking all day and finally getting your fire started, you can eat just about anything with something vaguely resembling nutritional content and it will be the Most Delicious Thing Ever.

First, the traditional. Indeed, the wieners.

There is a black hole in the mountains of North Carolina where Oscar Mayer will not venture, apparently. At the tiny gas station/food mart we where we picked up our evening’s feast, their selection of dogs consisted of small bright red things, large bright red things, and polish sausage. So, polish sausage it was!

Due to the tragic mistake of packing the same day we left, there were small yet essential items that got left behind. For example, condiments. Luckily, I had a small arsenal of sauce packets stuffed away in my glove compartment from god knows how long ago. See the color of that mustard? That is a Chick-fil-a packet, once bright yellow I’m sure, that had gone tragically dark ochre. Not that this stopped me from eating it, mind you. Few things can come in the way of a girl and her mustard. Besides, I figured the painful retching from food poisoning could only make the trip more memorable. In the end, it was safe, a fact that was strongly appreciated, I am sure, by Drew, who is most definitely a fan of not getting vomited upon in the middle of the night.

And, well, that’s it for the real food. Frankly, canned soup and pbjs do not exciting pictures make. Dessert, on the other hand, is glorious. A prime example being smores. These babies are another requirement of fireside cooking, and are quite glorious when thrust into your drooling gaping maw.

Now here’s a secret: I make lazy smores. I don’t bother with that whole mess of graham crackers + chocolate bar. Far easier is to instead use chocolate covered graham crackers, conveniently nestled away in the cookie aisle of your local grocery store.

The one on the left is mine. See, a smore just isn’t proper unless it’s completely charred. See, I need to get a healthy dose of carcinogenic carbon every once in awhile. it’s all part of my secret plan to someday mutate into Coal Woman. I will terrorize households the world over by getting ashes on white carpets. Propane salesmen will quiver before me in fear and awe. Or I’ll die. But I suspect that’s gonna happen at some point anyhow.

Finally, I have a treat that was curled up waiting just for me at the grocery store when we stocked up for the trip. Cream Horns! Serious quantities of cream horns! All for $1.25!

It was like the Sugar Gods were smiling upon me that day. Like the heavens had opened up and these glorious tubes of sugar had blissfully sailed into my life.

It’s like you can almost smell the chorus of angels singing in the background.

I ate as many of these wee bastards as I was able, rammed them deep into the gullets of eager victims nearby, yet the cream horns still persist. Indeed, they are mana from heaven.

It’s a rare thing that can tempt a lady’s heart more then a big pile of meat.

There I was, casually roaming the aisles of the local Kroger, when a friendly little tube of sausage just hopped right on into my cart. Being a kind person, I allowed it to come along for the ride. I get home, and it promptly crawls into my freezer, curls right on up, and goes to sleep.

A few weeks later, I’m in the kitchen, just minding my own business, when I hear a pounding on the freezer door. I open it up, and out jumps the sausage tube! I had my suspicions that it wanted nothing more then to crawl down my throat! So I went on instinct, and left it out to thaw.

Later, when I whipped out a frying pan and cutting board, there it was, anxious to be sliced. I did the deed. Promptly afterwards, the patties hopped into the frying pan and began sizzling away. Don’t they just look so content?

Anyhow, they got all naughty and covered with grease. So I got out my handy dandy paper towels and patted them dry. This is a technique I honed back when I ate public school lunches. The napkins in public school cafeterias exist less to wipe your hands and mouth and more for absorbing pizza grease. So anyway, then I slapped a sausage into a nice toasty biscuit and doused it with syrup. I then topped off my sausage biscuit with a side of sausage.

Let me tell you, this concoction slid down my throat like nothing else. That meat sure knew a sucker when it saw me!