The Lake.

It wasn’t smoky. The mornings were cool but not cold, by any means. It was possibly perfect weather, really.

I’m not sure I have ever visited Christina Lake in August. Generally, we head up in July for a couple of weeks, but given the insanity of this year, we decided to sneak up for a few days over the last weekend. That, and the cabin was sitting unused, begging for attention. Our July time slot has as much to do with the fact that we can’t wait until August to get away as anything else, and a second summer trip up there might just become a more regular occurrence.

As always happens, food was a major part of the trip. Heck, there wasn’t much else to do except zip around in the boat, read books, swim… Take the dog for a walk. Plan and prepare food, we did that, too.

There was no work (not that there is a lot these days, anyway) and no household tasks, as they were left far behind.

We defaulted to the usual cabin fare – pizza on the barbecue – and no scorched dough this time, which was good. I tried to just cook just the dough off a little bit, which I think worked all right as the charcoal barbecue I have offers zero heat from above and as a consequence pizza can be a bit soggy. A pizza oven the barbecue is not. It *was my impression* that my mother-in-law (who is the owner of said cabin on said lake and the final arbiter of what is permitted to be set up at the cabin) seemed to be somewhat keen on me building a wood-fired pizza oven, but I might have been mistaken. I’ll have to double check before I bring over several sacks of pre-mix and start troweling.

Regardless, pizza was good. We also did some steaks, and a pulled pork. Before I give the impression that all we did was resort to our inner palaeolithic selves, most of what we ate was vegetables. The pork shoulder did triple duty as dinner for 8 in tacos one night, breakfast the next morning and then a second breakfast the next day, along with numerous incidental snacks.

Lunches were a mish-mash of brunch (as teenagers tend to sleep in quite a bit) and some salads. Rather good, really.

In hindsight, what made the food so good (aside from the fact that everything tastes better at the lake) is that we had the space, mentally, to plan and prepare great meals. We weren’t rushed to try to make any appointments. We didn’t have too many expectations on what we were going to eat – it was all pretty simple and straightforward.

The ancient cookware didn’t help things, but we managed to get around that. I will bring a couple of new non-stick pans out next year as well as a decent French knife. It seems that the entirety of the kitchen is made up with items that are old or superfluous from other kitchens. Some of the cutlery feels like it was never actually meant to be used in a kitchen situation at all. And a couple of the pots have bottoms so thin that they scorch the contents in a moment.

What did help was the fresh fruit we picked up on the way to the lake – there are some farming communities along the route and August is prime season for pretty much everything.

What also helped was my mother-in-law raiding her garden. Salad greens, cherry tomatoes, green onions…

That and some decent sunshine made for unlimited good food.