Eating Outdoors

Cammie wrote on her facebook updates that she enjoys eating outdoors as one of the best parts of Summer.

This brings up a memory long ago. We often set up the tables on the screened porch in Colorado when my Grandma Nellie and Grandpa BW feed us and the helping hands. They had a "cook house" when the worker population exceeded 10 or so. Some years they would even hire a cook to feed the worker crowd.

Outdoor eating meant that the patio in front with those nasty cottonwood trees had to be swept. They were very tall trees that grew wind blocks very quickly with little water. The cement patio disguised the huge water tank that held the water supply for the house before Orchard Mesa was connected to a water system.

Some evenings we would have the neighbors over and they would barbeque an elk roast and eat watermelon. As the evening progressed we all sat in big round metal pastel chairs and watched as the storm would come up from the West and thunder and lightening would strike the book cliff mountains 20 miles a way.

Grandpa could predict the weather from these strikes and determine which days we would be picking peaches from the 30 acre orchards.

One year the cook had a particularly good recipe that I was able to get her to write down. I was 12 at the time and was totally in love with coconut macaroons. Makes my mouth water just to think about it.

I usually had a birthday back in Colorado. We came every year to help out. I got to choose from the cake mixes which cake was going to be made for me. I usually went for the spice cake. My sister usually went for a little more exotic cake. Penuche. They called it burnt sugar frosting back then.

When the grandparents moved into the city. The outdoor dining continued. There really wasn't room for 7 people to eat at the table unless it was outside.

It was here that dad made the infamous remark. After the mechanical collapse of one of Grandma's horizontal freezers. Don't worry Nellie, some of the chickens we cleaned out the freezer were old enough to go to Kindergarten!

You can imagine that flack he took for that!

Enjoy some al fresco dining soon!

Love
Pat