“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