A Feral Cookout

It's fine to be fancy and also fine to take it down to the basics

Sausage cooked over wood and potatoes in the fire

It was the first day of fall, but the heat of summer in our backyards encouraged us to rally for a lakeside supper picnic at the diminishing reservoir. A cookout! Over wood at the water’s edge. Check. Anyone who has lived year-round in Wyoming knows to grab the light and warmth while you can. It will change soon and stay that way for a long time.

Sausages are the original convenience food, seasoned meat in a handy casing, making it portable, just like the Sumerians did in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago.

I had Bovine & Swine sausages from the farmers market and Aidell’s from the grocery store. And I had Idaho potatoes. John had been reminiscing about his mom’s tales of cooking potatoes in piles of burning leaves in the city in the 1930’s, when there were still trees dropping leaves in North Philly.  So I wrapped my Yukon Golds in aluminum foil to throw into our fire.

The Palisades Reservoir is way down, the water trickling into Idaho to water all those potatoes. We drove for over 20 minutes on dry lake bed to get to the water's edge.

Stephen brought the jet ski and the paddleboard, but once we got to the water's edge, it was so windy that little whitecaps were pushing toward the shore. It was not a water day, so we popped a can of cold beverage (a beer, a Radler, and canned Margaritas as well as toddler bubbly). Do not judge: sometimes, a canned cocktail is just right.

Iris enjoys spilling her canned beverage on her foot while Kirk raises a saber carrot. Rose cuts sausages and slips vegetables on their plates as she is wont to do.

We went to work with the task at hand. Make fire. Add wrapped potatoes to the fire ring. Put sausages on a grill propped on the stones. Sit down and watch the kids stack and unstack stones and make sand angels in the dust of the lakebed. It was dining out at its most elemental.

Men at work. John smashes some butter into a roasted potato while Stephen and Kirk wrap up popcorn kernels in foil.

But we were outside and watching the sun go down over the mountains and enjoying those last rays before the cold sets in.

After our feral repast, Stephen broke out the popcorn and tried two methods of making it over the coals. The first was in an aluminum foil packet, which resulted in more burned kernels that popped. But done in a little saucepan with a foil cover, it was popped, smoky, and just right.

Popcorn cooked in foil on the coals blackened quickly. The Save the Day method was a little saucepan with a foil cover. Inspector Kirk judges the finished product.

Rose, John, and the kids had gone to an indigenous art show in Jackson that afternoon and watched a ceremonial dance in a circle. Our dinner was an homage to native minimalism. The basics. How much do you really need to have fun?

PS—I did have butter, salt, and pepper for the potatoes and the popcorn. And red cabbage sauerkraut for the sausages and mustard and ketchup. The other basics. That is how we Eat and Drink in Wyoming on the first day of fall!

Kirk put several buckets of water on the fire and then decimated it with his water cannon. Smoky the Bear would approve.