- The Village Chronicles -

A good group of us have been getting together occasionally for dinner and what not and I have slowly introduced Kendal to the group. I believe they have all decided that they are fans of Kendal by now, with the only major exception being Jax. This last week we all decided to meet at Rielly’s house for a Thanksgiving potluck feast, and Kendal and I thought it would be a good idea to put together a little honey baked ham for this occasion.

On Monday we went to the store to buy the parts for this ham, and Kendal decides (without consulting with me) that we need some sort of direction since we don’t really know what we are looking for. Knowing that Lisa had recently baked a ham of her own, Kendal decides to give her a ring. Lisa is an all around excellent cook so I am not completely turned off by the idea of getting pointed in the right direction by her. However, Kendal calls Lisa at least 4 times just while we are searching the store for ingredients and then another 5 times while we are cooking the thing. At this time I am thinking that this is turning into more of a chore than an adventure, and I didn’t even realize the trouble that this endless dialogue would cause me. Lisa and my Mom are great friends, so naturally Lisa tells my Mom about the ham and causes my Mom to wonder why I wasn’t calling her up for some ham tips. I believe I had a good defense though when I reminded my Mom that I am more of an experimental cooker and was looking for an adventure with the ham rather than just taking directions from an expert.

In the end though we managed to add some twists to Lisa’s recipe and we got an outstanding honey baked pineapple glazed mint flavored ham. I am almost positive that I overheard Parker giving us the blue ribbon for our ham and saying something like “That ham is fantastic, it satisfies in all the right ways!” I personally would have given the ribbon to Rielly though, because I deeply enjoyed his fried turkey.

The best part of the night though was when I walked in and saw who all was in attendance. After getting a healthy welcome from Mike and Parker, the next person I see is a lady we will call Jennifer. When I see Jennifer we exchange these greetings: Jennifer- “Hey Ben, how are you? Haven’t seen you in forever!” Me: “Hey, how’s it…I’m good...Yeah I haven’t seen you since I thought we were dating and I drew you a picture of me and Jojo for your half birthday only to find out that you were actually already engaged.” Maybe not exactly how it played out, but close.

So quickly after talking to the kitchen people I go to find Kendal (who is rummaging through the ice chest at this point in time) to try and remind him real quick who this Jennifer girl is. I start reminding Kendal about bringing Jennifer down to Austin to see some live music and enjoy everything there is to offer in the best city in the World, how Kendal met us downtown to take part, how we aggressively tried to convince Jennifer to get a tattoo, and how Kendal finally convinced her to do it by telling her that he would pay for it. But while I am telling him the story (wondering the whole time why he doesn’t seem to remember), Jennifer’s husband walks up and introduces himself to us and turns to Kendal and says, “So I heard you bought my wife a tattoo”. Kendal, for some reason, continues pretending to not remember and kind of just gives him a confused look. Then Jennifer walks up on the conversation and is like “Hey Kendal…you don’t remember me? Remember you bought me a tattoo…Remember we saw some blues or something…Come on you remember!” At this point in time I am just standing there thinking what Kendal’s strategy could possibly be, and then realizing he obviously doesn’t have one. Finally Jennifer shows Kendal the tattoo and Kendal decides this is a good time to remember and says something like “Oh yeah the tattoo…yeah its all coming back to me now…I think I was actually pushing for the forearm but it turned out nice.”