So Kris, we’re back.
Two sunny weeks in a cabin on a lake, no electricity, no traffic, just loons, ravens, tree frogs, eagles, and my favorite kind of cooking: roughing it.
I know you’re a five-star hotel kind of girl, not a camper.
For me, cooking at the cabin is some of the happiest cooking I do all year.
Truth be told, I was even more entranced with cabin cooking when the stove was a two-burner Coleman, and the only fridge was the little one we now use for keeping drinks cold. It made whatever came out of the kitchen so much more a triumph of skill over circumstances.
Now, with a propane fridge and a four-burner propane stove with an oven, and this year – oh luxury – hot water on demand in the kitchen sink, it’s arguable how much roughing it is actually going on.
Still, we have to bring in anything we intend to eat, or else persuade one of our land partners who’s coming in from Quadra Island to replenish the milk, eggs and bread that always disappear fastest.
Sometimes the weather’s cold and I bake. This year we hit the sweet spot of summer, day after hot, sunny day, and there was no incentive to heat up the kitchen.
Some years we have blackberries in profusion; this year we were about a week early. I spent a lot of time clearing out the bracken fern, salal and salmonberries on the slope where the blackberries grow, but that was contemplative, not culinary.
Oddly enough, we were awash in avocados. We brought in 10 and found another five waiting in the fridge. Guacamole, cream cheese, avocado and tomato sandwiches, avocado and radish salad: it was a theme….