Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Not a good idea, John.

John's parents love to camp.  It might be because they're extremely frugal or they really enjoy the outdoors.  Regardless, they fully embrace all aspects of the camping experience and try to integrate it whenever possible.  Side note:  I've never gone to the bathroom outside and I'm not sure I know how, so that's what's keeping me from more rustic camping.  My only experience with camping was at a "campground" where I heard the most white trash conversations I could ever have imagined).

One fourth of July weekend, the Kissingers invited my parents and my sister and Kirk to their house on Lake Michigan.  My in-laws like to have everything PLANNED.  This includes a notebook that describes what activities we will be doing or have the option of doing and what we will be eating.  I plan on taking a photo and posting one day.  One night, the planned evening activity was having an outdoor hot dog roast over the firepit, to be followed up by S'mores.  Overall, yummy!

Now, while everyone can acknowledge that hot dogs are delicious, my dad sometimes has a hard time believing that he's actually eating a hot dog, let alone cooking it over a fire using a special stick.   I think he thinks they are overall a "low-level operation," being used to as he is to home-cooked Chaldean dishes that involve someone slaving all day over a hot stove.  Thankfully, the novelty of the experience was distracting.  Or maybe it reminded him of the time he was camping in the desert and decided to cut off a bit of his finger and cook it over a fire to see how human flesh tasted.  He thought better of it as he was about to put it into his mouth - cannibalism really is reserved for a last resort.  I'm sure he would've tasted like chicken.

Hot dog roasting went well.  Check.  Now onto S'mores.  This is what my dad would refer to as an "advanced system."  The marshmallow roasting and the quick removal to make a scrumptious graham cracker and chocolate dessert was intriguing to my dad. But, my dad has an aversion to stickiness, even if it's not on him.  Anything sticky weirds him out.   In fact, at one point he confessed to us that if someone wanted to torture him, he could drip honey on his neck and not allow him to clean it.  

There's a method to removing marshmallow goo, so one can store the sticks without attracting ants.  John explained it to my dad:  you take your metal stick and plunge it into the sand and take it in and out repeatedly until the sand has removed all the goo, much like a good exfoliant.  So, John being the good son-in-law, takes my dad's stick and plunged it authoritatively into the sand, except it hit a rock buried shallowly on the beach.  John removed it to find that the roasting stick with tines akimbo.  My dad simply looked at him with pity (or perhaps distress, because it was still sticky) and said, "That was not a good idea, John," and walked away in search of some proper wipes to sort out the matter.

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