A Good Time Was Had by All.

Dinner was a hit I think. BBQ'ed Ribs and Pork Tenderloin Roast. I think the Roast got a bit dry and the ribs were not what you could plausibly call "Fall off the Bone". but the flavours were all good and the assortments of salads were excellent. There were also some last-minute potatoes that went over quite well. Conversations were plentiful as was the beer, rye, vodka, and wine.

There was some small talk of finding a Hot Tub, but that didn't quite pan out. An injury put a damper on the evening, it involved an errant spark from the fire pit and someone's eyeball(not mine). Hopefully there isn't too much dammage, but I think a visit to a doctor in the morning would be a good idea.

My cousin brought her boyfriend down to meet the whole family for the first time. He seemed to take it well, and was well recieved in turn; which is good, because it would suck to travel across the entire country and then get into a fistfight with imaginary uncle Ralph.

The normal huge crowd of people was not so much of an issue this time because the party was somewhat split between inside and outside. So there was two medium sized groups rather than one huge throng. I think I can handle the medium sized groups much better -- I tend to get antsy in large groups, I'm not really fond of crowds. It's not as bad when it's family, but It's never my favourite thing.

Now its ten to one in the A.M., I really should go to bed. We are apparently going to see the Wolf sanctuary in the morning.

Hungry?

I'm adding a couple of new entries to the food section of my Blogroll.Insanewiches, and This is Why You're Fat.

The first is a blog featuring interesting and amazing sandwiches. Everything from a Diet Debacle Sandwich to andEast Meets Westdog. Truly an ingenious website!

Then we have our other fascinating foodie foundry. The apparent premise behind "This is Why You're Fat" appears to be that visitors submit photos of their tasty concoctions that may not be entirely health conscious. I know I've found at least a little bit of inspiration here! Though I'm a little frightened of the Double Bypass Burger

Do you know where your food comes from?

I have no idea. Well, that's not entirely true. For the last year-ish I've been paying more attention to what I eat. I realized early on that I actually give a shit about the quality of food that I consume. The "happiness" of the animal seems to directly relate to how good it tastes. Pasture finished steaks seem more tender, more... "steaky" than the factory farmed equivalent. Free range, organic eggy-weggs are tastier than the cheap ones with neon yellow yolks.

Did you know that carrots are actually incredibly sweet? The last time Lindsay and I got standard supermarket produce the veggies all tasted like freaking cardboard in comparison. Flavours from the Farmers Market are over all, more intense, more yummy, and more happy.

Also, more expensive to be sure! But I don't think that it's prohibitively so. We still manage to eat healthy and sufficiently on around $100 a week. Give or take, depending on what's on the meal plan.

I think a big reason that people don't go for the organic, free range, hippy dippy, granola crunching, yuppie food is that they're nervous about it. At least, that was the case for me. I simply assumed that the cheap, mass produced, crap that I'd always been buying was all that I could afford. I assumed that the flavours in organics couldn't be so much better that what the super store could come up with. I was afraid to take the plunge and change. I didn't want to interrupt the status quo. I know better now. Switching to happy food didn't disrupt anything. I've simple switched supermarkets to one where I can chat with the supplier. Where I know that the people running the place care as much about the product as they do about the purchaser, not the purchaser and the profit like other places seem to.

I don't know, maybe I'm just being elitist. Maybe the improvement in quality is some sort of placebo effect that I'm getting from the additional cost of organics. Either way, I still think I'm getting the better end of the bargain.