We brought back 3 dozen Jakolof Bays from Homer;
Bob W had promised an oyster knife, but he couldn't
find it, so I said, do you have a butter knife? Sure!
But his butter knives were way too weak and bent at
the slightest provocation. So I said, do you have a
churchkey? And I told them I'd open half using the
churchkey, and they could grill the rest. Modus
operandi: try to open one, if it didn't open, put it
in the pile to be grilled. I ended up opening 2 dozen
(one of them stinky bad) and there were 15 to grill,
the dozens being of the baker's variety. I do love
raw oysters. I do not love grilled oysters.

As it was Alaska, there was salmon three ways:

Big Chris's mother contributed home-smoked salmon dip
with cream cheese and dill, which was fine but would
have been finer with less dill;

also home-smoked salmon, quite good, not too salty,
from I believe the same source; and

Chris grilled up some that he'd caught fresh yesterday.

A request was put in to him in his traditional role
(which I covet) of grillmeister to cook the tri-tips
medium-rare, and so it was. Unfortunately, as it was
lean tri-tip, and someone had sliced it way too thick
before I could get to it, it presented tough though
tasty. I didn't check out the chicken, as it was all
white meat.

Chris had harvested two giant bok choy from Bob's
garden; I cleaned thse with the help of Hermien
(suspicious of my eyesight, she checked my work and
found a slug and a bit of dirt that I'd missed),
separated them into three categories depending on
length of cooking (leaves, julienned, longest,
stems, chunked, medium, and flowers, just to wilt),
and cooked them in chicken fat from the rendering
of the skins. Seasonings were garlic, Chinese wine,
and a touch of soy; later I added a splash of hoisin
because Bob likes that. It ended up looking more
like southern greens than stir-fry, i.e., not that
appetizing, but the huge potful was all consumed.

During the festivities a number of harassing phone
calls from friends unable to attend, including
Medium Chris, one of the usual organizers, who was
somehow stranded in Minnesota or Wisconsin or one
of those flyover states.

At dinner the day before, Bob D had told a funny
Florida Delta Airlines and TSA story that featured
a key lime pie, so when Lilli and Bob W and I were at
Costco in the morning for last-minute supplies, we were
pleased to find giant double-size key lime pies on
offer for $15 and picked one up. We'd been deputed to
source the desserts, which were nominally from Bob D
and his sister Margie and niece Meghan. The pie turned
out to be better than you'd expect for mass-produced,
with real cream and real yellow lime juice.

We also bought some black-and-white shortbreads (Bob D
lives in Hell's Kitchen, NYC); these were ok.

There was also a black and white cake, very rich, not
too sweet, from Moose Is Loose bakery in Soldotna,
courtesy of Kerri and Dan, who drove up from there;
they're emergency personnel, responsible for first
response on the Kenai - I joked that his job was to
make sure Mt. Redoubt doesn't erupt again, and Dan
said that was basically it.

Lot of food, most of it quite good.

Wines included reiterations of most of the suspects
described earlier, augmented with certain oddities,
such as Bear Creek rhubarb wine and port; these were
not like wine and not like Port respectively. I found
the former somewhat offensive, the latter just strange.

I cleansed my palate with a glass of Fidelitas Malbec
I think 2011, which soothed me considerably.

Lot of wine, most of it quite good.
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