Red Wine and Raisin Pie

It must be theme week in the blog-o-sphere. Following is the story which explains Chrystal's post on raisin pie. Until she'd written about it, I had filed this tid bit away and hadn't given much thought to how uproariously funny it was! I don't expect you to fall off your chair laughing because you really had to be there to experience the... experience!

A number of years ago my friend Dave (not related) was married. For his stag, he simply wanted to go camping with his buddies. So, we went. One of our mutual friends used to fight fire for Alberta Forestry and knew of a site we could use that had - believe it or not - a sauna out in the bush. 15 or so years ago, Norm and his forestry co-workers built it, not far from the helicopter landing pad, right on the edge of the water. So here is this wooden structure out in the middle of almost nowhere, complete with wood stove piled high with rocks. We fired up the stove, heated up the rocks and proceeded to bring 5 gallon pales of water up from the creek. We had a steamy haven in almost no time. While everyone else was sporting beer and scotch, I had trundled in with a bottle each of white and red wine.

In comes Matt - a then 19 or 20 year old guy whom Dave and Norm knew from their Scouts Canada days. He had just come in from working the day in Calgary and wasn't quite up to speed with the festivities. The boys were running low, so Matt's beer disappeared quickly. He was upset. "So... what've ya got, now that you've had all my beer?" I generously pointed out that there was a healthy bottle of wine on the front bench outside the door. "I hate red wine...", but not to be left without a beverage, "...well, OK..." We should have run the "trouble" flags up to full mast... This was no ordinary bottle of red wine. It was a 1.5 litre bottle of red wine.

We decided to head back to camp after a couple hours and once there, fire lit and roaring, we dug in to dessert, because most of us had eaten prior to the trek into the woods. I was sporting two pies - apple and raisin. Raisin pie is one of my favourites... apparently not everyone's! Matt had not eaten as recently as the rest of us, so he was hungry. By the time he showed up at the camp, we had devoured the apple pie and were in to the raisin pie. "What's to eat, man, I'm hungry!" Being the generous sort I am, I offered up the last half of the raisin pie. "I hate raisin pie... well... OK."

Keeping in mind, the once full bottle of red wine was, shall we say, not so full anymore. Matt, however, was happily munching and sipping away. We all soon retired to our respective resting places and bedded down for the night. In the morning, there was Matt, rolled up in a ball inside his sleeping bag - out in the middle of of the camp site. What else did we discover? All around the camp there were these little, red, raisin-like piles.

I wonder who left these here?

Poor Matt.

We figured he deserved a healthy breakfast for what he'd been through, so on went the coffee and the fixings for a feast. When he finally poked his head out of the sleeping bag, we were all around the fire munching and drinking away. "Matt, would you like some breakfast? We have GRAPE JUICE... and look, one more piece of RAISIN PIE!"

From what I could make out, the language flowing forth from the sleeping bag was not red, but rather... blue.

Poor Matt.

This week you can also read about
16 reasons to serve red wine at work.

Eat, drink and be merry...