Time to Eat!

       

               I'm a simple man. Tomorrow's a holiday. I will baste and roast a rack of baby back ribs. Pam will make scalloped potatoes, lot's of cheese, and fix a nice mixed green salad, but it's not necessary. I have gotten by on less, on purpose, when I had far and away more sumptuous choices.

        For years I did a ton of my hunting and fishing out of the back of my pickup camper shell. Where the sun went down, so did I, and started fixing supper in red sunsets with coyote music and owl hoots piped in. In that camper shell was a medium-sized ice chest with cold milk, a jug of orange juice, eggs, link sausage, and various selections of frozen-hard red meat; steaks, pork chops and such that thawed as the trip progressed and helped keep the milk and juice cold, saving on ice miles from any. One night I'd eat a rib-eye. Next night maybe a pork chop. Then maybe a t-bone. 

       Whoever was with me ate the same. Ask Rick Shavney, Dave Hladik and so forth. It's amazing how good a steak or chop tastes out of an iron skillet with a little Montreal Steak Rub scattered on top. You like medium? Got it. Rare? My choice. Watch your watch while the meat sizzles. Crack the topper vent to let the smoke out. Listen to the wind whistle outside up in Wyoming on an antelope hunt, camper warm and cozy from the little two burner propane stove. 

        Snakes outside? Reach under the mattress and pour us some medicine, got awhile to go 'til dinner.

        The canned goods I always carried along in my snug little plastic Walmart portable cabinet were simple as well. My mother was the one that taught me that every good meal had something green in it. The cabinet, on top of which rested the stove, was full of canned green choices, and (oh, my goodness) canned new potatoes which I would alternately fry in the same pan as the meat, or boil in their own can, dealer's choice, and I loved them both ways. Canned spinach with a dash of vinegar on top was always my green choice. I love it. Dessert? Canned peaches, apricots, or sliced pears out of the cooler so cold they made your teeth hurt.

        Of course there were extra matches, toothpicks, utensils, lantern mantles, can openers, ad infinitum in the trusty little cupboard, you name it, it was in there.

        Dish washing was easy. We ate off of paper plates nestled in hard plastic paper plate holders. Dinner done, the plates went into the Green Hefty hung from a hook, right over the twenty-gallon Igloo water cooler in the camper corner opposite the "cooking area" by the backdoor.

        We ate with hard steel silverware, the only way to really attack red meat. Wash your "silver"? Lick it off, and stick it under your mattress, which, by the way, the camper's two mattresses were atop three-quarter-inch plywood sheets fastened with door hinges to the camper shell so that I could push them up, and bungee cord them out of the way while cooking. Need a knife to cut your steak? Use your pocket knife, and wipe it on your pants when you're done. I'm a simple man.

        Fully seventy to eighty percent of my outings like that just described were by myself. I grew up partially raised by grandparents (until I was four), and was already seven years old before my next oldest brother, Vernon, the computer whiz that puts this blog together for me (being simple can mean not being smart), came along. As a consequence, I have never been afraid to be alone with myself. Lots of us have grown up that way, life's vicissitudes being what they are.

        Anyway, I am going to let you in on a little secret. That ice chest I told you about was always packed to the gills, just like I said it was. But at the end of the day, by myself, my favorite meal was a plain potted meat sandwich, unseasoned, between two pieces of soft bread, slathered thick, pink, and pungent. They made me happy, happy, happy. 

       They still do. I am a simple man.