Eleventh Dutch Oven Gathering

Some moments begin an unexpected train of events.

Soon after Ed and I married we went camping with friends, and they made a cherry pie in a dutch oven.

Ed caught cast-ironitis immediately. Soon he was making apple crisp and cornbread in his own dutch oven.

These dutch ovens are not the pans used in the kitchen. They are cast iron pots which sit on three short legs and have a flat lid with a lip for holding coals. These are the pots that traveled west on covered wagons, served food to gold miners, and were carried by cooks on cowboy chuck wagons.

Over the years Ed added more pots to his collection until he could make meals with four different recipes all cooked in his pots. He also read all he could on dutch oven cooking and wished he could attend a Dutch Oven Gathering (or DOG) to enjoy cooking with others, but they were all held out west. In 2006 he heard of a DOG to be held in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and planned a family vacation to coincide with the event. We enjoyed our vacation, but the DOG was canceled because of lack of participants.

Meanwhile, Ed kept cooking. He dragged his pots to family gatherings, picnics, and even to work. My brothers caught the bug and bought their own pots, as did several of Ed's friends. Finally in 2008 Ed decided to host his own DOG. We invited everyone we knew that owned a dutch oven to join us in a cook-off at our house. Everyone made their favorite dutch oven recipe, and we all voted on our favorite.

If you are a long-time reader to Home Joys, you know that it became a tradition. Each year we enjoyed a night of camaraderie and good-natured competition around hot coals. And every year we ate well. The variety of foods that could be baked, broiled, stewed, fried, and simmered in a dutch oven always amazed me.

It has been a few years since I've posted about our Dutch Oven Gatherings. In 2016 it rained and though we managed to hold the DOG with the help of the basement and a canopy, I didn't get many photos.

In 2017, soon after Ed's first brain surgery, my parents hosted the DOG at their house. Several people cooked keto food for Ed and proved that special diets can still have creative delicious food, but I never blogged about it. Last year, for the first time since it began, we didn't have a DOG. Between Ed's health and the constant rain, it just didn't happen.

This spring when I asked my sons if they wanted to host a DOG, they immediately started planning. I thought we could have it at our house and Ed could enjoy it from his wheelchair, going inside to rest as needed. Most of the DOGs have been held in the height of summer on the hottest day of the year and we thought May would be more comfortable. But Ed's quick decline meant that we never even set a date before we knew it would be impossible for him to attend.

But my boys didn't give up, and so we scheduled this year's DOG on the Saturday of Father's Day weekend. It is hard to do things like this without Ed, but I knew that Ed would be delighted that we were still carrying on a tradition he began.

So twelve years after the first, we held the eleventh Dutch Oven Gathering at our house.

And, except for missing Ed, it might have been the best yet. We had the largest number of participants cooking with 27 pots. Some of these folks had attended every DOG, some were here for the first time for the inaugural use of their brand-new pot. Some of these cooks weren't born when we hosted the first gathering. We even had our first female participant. (Though there is always quite a bit of female help behind the scenes.)

 

Again, the brick retaining wall was the perfect buffet line.

Then it was time to open the lids and dig in.

My brother's daughter and two sons rolled dough and made fry bread. 

It disappeared so quickly I only got a bite.

The competition was stiff, but those three won the DOG favorite for 2019.

You can also read about past dutch oven gatherings. 2015, 2014,  2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009