#162. or, Silicone Spatulas

  I am a campfire cooker. That's my thing. Well, one of my many talents. No.....not really, I mean yes, the campfire cooking, no, not too many talents.

  Whenever we go camping, I'm in charge of cooking the significant things we eat. Whenever I can, I do it on an open fire.

  I need to tell you here that primarily, my wife is the reason our family is as healthy as we are. She does the meal planning because I seem to lack that skill. If she asks me what we should have for supper tonight, most likely I'll draw a blank, freeze up with that deer in the headlights, glazed over, vacant eyes look, and give her my go-to answer. "UM.........nachos?" If the task were to fall to me, ours would be the home where you would come in and probably find a kid huddled in the corner in a tattered loincloth,  eyeballing the dog with visions of it on a spit over a fire on the back lawn.

  But when we're camping and she says, "here, cook this", I'm magically transformed into a combination of a kinder, gentler version of Gordon Ramsay and Bear Grylls. An Outback Iron Chef, if you will. Being able to do this, requires me to draw heavily on my vast and skilled knowledge of shop tools, and farm boy ingenuity.  My griddle handle is fashioned from a old pair of Vice Grips, and all of my bacon grease goes into an empty beer can that I've cut the top out of with a survival knife.

Fire, meat, Vice Grips.......yup!

  So, the one thing that I do cook on the campfire that's an actual combination of ingredients, is what I like to call my version of a campfire McGriddle. Basically, it's a large breakfast sausage patty with a slice of melted cheese on it, a couple fried eggs, all between 2 pancakes. I do this well, and I take pride in my ability to plate a desirable product that my family wants to eat.

This is why we come home from camping, 10 lbs heavier.

  The thing that has always bothered me while preparing this is that when you fry an egg on the campfire, the griddle surface is rarely flat. This causes my fried eggs to stretch out into unsightly, and unwieldy shapes. I was telling my wife of the grief this was causing me, and how I was going to have to go out to the shop to fabricate a metal ring by cutting a 1 inch metal strip of stainless steel, forming it around a piece of 4 inch pipe, tack welding it into position, and possibly, if I got fancy, fashioning some type of handle out of piece of heavy wire, a sheet metal screw and a chunk of old wooden broom handle.  (The blueprints are in my head if you're interested.)

   She went and got this giant rubber band looking thingy, and said, "here, use this."

  I have to tell you, I was more than skeptical. From a childhood on the farm spent trying to burn things that aren't necessarily meant to be burnt, rubber on the fire, while creating an awesome amount of thick black smoke, doesn't take long to be reduced into an oozing puddle. But because I trust my wife implicitly, and after 20 years together, know better that to question her intelligence, tossed the flimsy rubber ring onto the griddle.

  ............and it didn't melt, not to mention, working exceptionally well.

  Apparently, it's made of silicone? Silicone! The same stuff I use in the shop to glue the differential cover  back on the rear end of my pick-up, and seal the bathtub with. The same stuff they used to make bigger boobs with. They make frickin spatulas out of the stuff! Who knew?

  But more importantly, why did they not make the space shuttle out of this miracle witchcraft-ery!  Female astronauts with giant fake, silicone filled boobs, could rest at jiggly ease during the fiery re-entry through earth's atmosphere without any worries to whether or not they had lost any of the adhesive heat resistant tiles while hurtling through space at 20 000 miles per hour.  Plus, zero chance of dying in a crash landing because silicone is bouncy and returns to it's original shape. The possibilities are endless.

  Then they could go home to their families and make perfectly rounded eggs, every damned time, on open fires with flimsy silicone rings. Or at the very least, have their husbands do it.

  ...............and for the record, as much as I am in awe of silicone, I still like the natural boobs better.



  Joining up this weekend with the Yeah Write Moonshine grid, and the Humor Me Blog Hop. Click on the button to read some awesome blogs that are way better than mine.