“It’s nothing like pemmican, you know, Ray,” Fraser remarked casually, not even turning away from the stove to look at Ray.

 

“What’s not like pemmican, Benny?” Ray asked from his post at the kitchen table where he was busy breaking up pemmican into tiny pea-sized pieces and dumping the pieces into a bowl.

 

“Polenta,” replied the Mountie, while stirring corn meal with a wire whip into salted water. “Remember that first night I had dinner at the house I didn’t know what polenta looked like and you told me it was similar to pemmican.” He dumped a small glass bowl full of assorted spices into the boiling yellow mixture and kept stirring. The yellow mass bubbled and heaved in its pot. Fraser kept it in motion to stop it from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

 

“What do you expect, I didn’t know what pemmican really looked like back then,” Ray put down his knife and reached for a long strip of that very delicacy and chewed on it thoughtfully. “We were both pretty ignorant five years ago but now we know stuff. I know how good pemmican is.”

 

“Indeed you do,” Fraser dumped the contents into the pot into a glass baking dish, poured melted butter over it and sprinkled the top with grated parmesan cheese. “And I can make polenta after a fashion. After my own fashion, that is.” So saying, he carried the baking dish over to the table, took a handful of crumbled pemmican from the bowl and sprinkled them over the top of the yellow mush.

 

Before returning to the oven to pop the dish in to bake, he stopped to plant a kiss on the top of his lover’s head.

 

End

 

 

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