BobFood

One of our many beach traditions is to have our friend and (former) deli owner, Bob, prepare a dinner for us. Even though he and his wife, Rose, are now retired from that business, he still agreed to cater a meal for us tonight.

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The beach crowd this week is huge, but Bob still made more food than we could eat in one sitting. The meal included grilled cheese sandwiches (delicious!), hot dogs with optional chili, burgers, cheeseburgers (great!) with optional bacon, buns, salad, two homemade dressings, tuna, salmon, and tile fish.

The meal was delicious, and everyone ate their fill (and then some).

For dessert, Bob made us three cakes:  two carrot cakes (CaBobCakes, and here's one),

and one incredibly dense chocolate cake, the legendary (at least among us), BobCake.

To our surprise, Bob said that he managed to put two more pounds of chocolate in this year's BobCake than in last year's.  That's not two pounds of chocolate, mind you; that's two additional pounds of chocolate beyond the insane amount in last year's BobCake.  As you can see in the photo. the frosting sometimes breaks in what one of my nephews called a shingle of chocolate; the description was apt.

Beach life is dessert life.

An unexpected lunchtime treat

When I'm here at the beach, I eat lunch every day that the restaurant is open at my favorite local place, Archibald's.  Bob and Rose, the owners, and all the folks who work there are great people, and the food is very tasty.  Today, when I walked into the building, the specials board brought me a nice treat.

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I ordered the Mark II, of course; how could I not?  (The II, by the way, is a reference to the sandwich they created for me last year.)  It was a delicious sandwich that I very much enjoyed.

I also had a cup of their watermelon gazpacho, which was very good and just the right refreshing soup for a hot day.

Not everyone or everything at the beach is so nice to me, of course.  Politically, here as everywhere in the U.S., many folks disagree with my positions.  For example, I strongly believe we should have nationalized health care, and so I support ObamaCare as a first step in that direction.  Other people disagree, as you can see from this lovely statement in front of a local store.

As I was leaving the shop, a young woman was posing behind this contraption.  I'm glad we are all free to agree to disagree.

Bobmeal

Each year at the beach, we ask Bob, a local chef and co-owner of our favorite lunch place, to cater a dinner for us.  Tonight, we enjoyed the feast he prepared.

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We had a little something for everyone:  grilled cheese sandwiches, cheeseburgers, hamburgers, hot dogs, chili to go on the hot dogs, salmon, tuna, dill sauce for the fish, salad, potato salad, buns, various burger and dog fixings, and dressings and condiments.  Suffice to say that we fed a crowd of 17 and had plenty of leftovers.

Later in the evening, we all enjoyed one of Bob's desserts.  Traditionally, we have selected as that dessert his death-by-chocolate cake, which we call simply the Bobcake.  This beast is dark, huge, delicious, and rich.  It's so big, in fact, that our large crowd typically needs more than a week to consume it.  This year, to help us chart progress, we put grid marks on the tray that supports the cake.

As we did last year, we asked Bob to make us a second cake, his incredibly sweet and delicious carrot cake, aka CaBobcake.

For the first time, we felt a third cake was in order, Bob's chocolate swirl cheesecake, aka ChBobcake.

The three desserts together pose a formidable challenge.

Fortunately, we are up to it and anticipate success in our battle with the cakes.

That said, we have little in the way of proof of our belief, because after one evening's consumption, the Bobcake sneers at our puny efforts.

The other two cakes, being of less sturdy stuff, are definitely well on their way to disappearing.

More in tomorrow's report of the Bobcakes.