Pie

My wife is not know for her amazing cooking skills. In fact she is actually known for her complete lack of cooking skills. Yet every year around Thanksgiving time, it is time for her to bake a pumpkin pie.

I believe she grows insanely jealous from every year from all the praise and adoration that I receive for my massive cooking skillz and cock. So she ventures into the unfamiliar territory of the kitchen to ruin approximation 16 ounces of pumpkin, sugar, coconut milk, egg re-placer and pumpkin pie spice.

In the previous years we have experienced, burned pies, sugarless pies, pies with roughly 10 millimeters thick and the infamous "pie with no crust". This is my wife's usually process for cooking pumpkin pie:

Step one: Forget to cook the pumpkin.
Step two: Randomly substitute ingredients.
Step three: Burn the pie.
Step four: Serve burned pie-like abomination, then wonder why no one wants a piece.

This year however, my wife took the radical step of actually finding a recipe for pie. She went shopping and bought the actual ingredients. She still forgot to cook the pumpkin, but lucky she married me, so I cooked the pumpkin and scooped into a bowl for her.

She then measured the ingredients and put them into a blender. After arguing with me and others about random ingredient swapping (she relented, and finally decided that based on history, it wasn't such a good idea) she blended the ingredients and then wandered off.

So I made a crust for her. And poured the pie mix into the crusts. I however made her cook them herself. However, after putting them in the oven, she promptly forgot all about them. Luckily her Uncle's convection oven uses a timer, and it shut off by itself before it burned the pie to a crisp.

The pie this year did not turn out so bad, especially when covered with copious amounts of my famous vegan whipped topping.

The thrill of the hunt

Last weekend I took lil' Fantaboulous out to her grandparents house. Her Grandparents live between Eugene and the coast, on fifteen acres of land right on the side of a busy highway. The reason I brought her out was the mighty Oregon Chantrelle.



The Chantrelle is quite common on Grandpa Awesomecool's land and easy to identify. It is also really fun to find, its like an Easter Egg hunt for adults. Even mini-Fantaboulous likes to go looking for the tasty shroom, even though if a mushroom is in the same room as her dinner, she wont touch it.

We hiked up into the great wooded mountains where the feisty orange fungus lurked and began to hunt. The Grandparents had marked out some areas of the mountain on a previous expedition of where the had found "loads of Chantrelles, more than we could pick." We found the taped area and began to look around, after about fifteen minutes, I had found two mushrooms.

"They are right over this ridge." They kept saying. We kept hiking and hiking, and nary a mushroom was to be found. The grandparents kept making excuses and saying "They were here last time..."

I finally found a small patch poking out of some loose pine needles and began to gather, I called lil' Fantaboulous over so she could participate, but before she could get there Grandpa Awesomcool pounced on them like a fat kid on a cupcake, and grabs everyone in sight.

I broke away from my parents with lil' Fantabulous to see if we could find some without my mushroom hungry parents grabbing them all. I found another patch of mushrooms and let my 13 year old began picking them in earnest.

Then my parents little mutt of a dog, runs over to us. The thing looks like a doberman crossed with a pitbull, but is the size of a tea cup poodle. The thing acts like a five year old who has been freebaseing pixie sticks. It begins to jump all over us, trying to lick our faces, while manically and precisely stomping on every single chantrelle in the immediate area. So I grab the little bitch(because that is what she is) and toss her into the bushes. She bolts back out and plays "steamroller" on the few remaining mushrooms.

A little while later I find another patch of shrooms and give lil' Fantabulous a third chance to gather. However, she began moving around like a butterfly with ADD, picking up every mushroom that was distinctly not Chantrelles.

"Dad! Come over here! Look at this one! Have you seen one like this before?"

I walk over and look. "Yeah, I have seen those ones, pick the Chantrelles honey."

"Dad!Come over here! Did you see this one before? It looks like a boob!"

I walk back over. "Yeah, that's great Honey, I have never seen those before. Lets just pick the chantrelles though. OK?"

"Dad! Dad! Dad! Come over here, quick!"

"Why? Did you find another weird looking mushroom? Because I am only interested in Edible mushrooms. Don't call me over unless you find some chantrelles."

"No, Dad, come over here! Its important, come here!"

So I march back through the wet brush. "What is it?"

"Look at this bug!"

I sent lil' Fantabulous to go pick mushrooms with her grandmother, and went off with Grandpa Awesomecool. I tried to stay at least 50 feet from my dad, to prevent him from poaching all the shrooms I would find. We kept finding small patches, while wandering farther and farther from Grandama and lil' Fantabulous. After about 30 minutes Grandpa gets a call on his cell phone saying that they had found "A huge patch of mushrooms" and that we "Should come back right away!" to pick them. So my dad says that we should wander back the way we came.

I kept telling him "they are going to be finished by the time we get there!" But dad insists on heading back, and so we go. After stopping for a few small patches that Dad missed on the way, we finally hike all the way back to where we started.

"We finished picking them all, there actually weren't that many after all." Says Grandma Awesomecool.

"I found a pretty rock!" Says lil' Fantabulous.

Then the rain came down in typical Oregon fashion, in sheets and sideways.

"Well...That's enough of that, lets get the fuck out of here." Says I, and we do.

Not feeling it

Since I have been back in the US, I don't really have anything to say anymore. Not that there is not a lot of things to talk about, like overwhelming numbers of fat people, people with dogs, fat people with dogs, trucks, fat people in trucks, fat people with dogs in trucks, etc.

America has become really, really boring to me. Actually, more annoying than boring. After hearing what people have to say in this country, and watching TV that I can understand for the first time in a year, I actually miss not understanding what people are saying.

I was at the local grange with my daughter, picking up hay and goat food for "Crazy old one tit" When I heard a couple of fat American women talking about their dogs.

"The thing about Callie here is she has a really unique personality"

"Wow, really?"

"You know how some dogs get excited when they see people or other dogs?"

"Oh, tell me about it. My dogs get really excited when they see people or other dogs."

"Well, her is the thing about my Callie. She gets really, really excited when she sees people or other dogs!"

"NO, WAY!"

I cant actually remember what they said, but I was just struck by how stupid their fucking conversation about their stupid dogs was. Its a fucking dog, everyone in america has one, and they might seem like they are unique and interesting to you, but at the end of the day, it eats, it shits, it barks. It is still just a fucking dog.

Then my daughter went on an overnight camping trip. On the trip the teachers made all the students try some salad. One of the students gagged, because she had never had salad before. She spit it out and said. "This is not real food."

OMFG. This is why our kids are fat. Well not my kids. My kids eat salad. Your kids are fat.