The right place at the right time

     How did we get into this deal?  Here we are surrounded by championship cooks on a bus-man's holiday doing their thing.  They sure enjoy what they do; perhaps even more so when the only judges are each other and a bunch of amateurs, and there is no clock screaming out, "You're late!  You're DQ-ed!"  A good insight into their mind sets can be found in the saga of the creme brulee.  I have a Traeger pellet grill, and Traeger sends me a recipe of the week.  A couple of weeks ago the recipe was for creme brulee.  I sent it to Tim and Wendy to take note of the novelty of the idea.  Guess what?  Wendy fired back with. "I've got all the ingredients and a dozen ramekins.  We'll do it!  My response was a semi-apology that said, " I wasn't asking you to make it; I was just pointing out the unusual nature of the recipe".  Once she got her teeth sunk into the idea, the outcome was never in doubt.  We were going to have creme brulee from the big green egg.
     First she made the custard...egg yolks, heavy cream, vanilla beans...you know the drill.

       The custard goes on the grill in a roaster pan half full of water.

     

After they had cooled and set up, it was time to caramelize the tops.  First you add the sugar.

     Then you get out the torch.

    

     And, when you are done, voila...creme brulee!

     

          OK, I know what you are thinking; "Life's short...eat dessert first."  We didn't.  This was dessert, and we ate it last.  First we had some "appetizers"!  Would you believe that the appetizers consisted of a stuffed meatloaf, lobster mac 'n cheese, and a huge lasagna with sausage?  First a couple of pictures of the meatloaf before and after slicing.

     Don't ask whose martini that is.

     

Then there is a picture of the lobster mac 'n cheese.

     And, as if that weren't enough, out came the lasagna with sausage.

      As you can well imagine, there were no entrees after those appetizers.  Did I mention that they were all prepared by award winning cooks?  There was something special about all of them.  Then we had the creme brulee.

     As the title of this piece suggests, Durelle and I ( and Dick Brann) have enjoyed being the unwarranted recipients of this largese.  Tomorrow the Fylers arrive to help share this burden.

     As I close, I will attach a 'tugboat in the fog' picture for Ann.

     I can only imagine what sort of delicacies we will see on the fourth of July.