Bearing burden of cookware … and its products

Phil is a Polish guy from Buffalo. But he thinks he’s Dutch.

Judging from his attraction to the Dutch oven, which Phil totes from pillar to post, from Round Pond to Cobb Manor, Phil thinks he is from the Netherlands. Maybe he should get wooden shoes … and a windmill.

For the uninitiated, a Dutch oven is a huge, heavy pot made from the same material that the Nazis used in their Panzer tanks.

Unfazed by this cumbersome weight, Phil once dragged the torture device along on a canoe trip, wrapped in heavy canvas to disguise its insidious nature. There was no disguising that weight. Phil’s canoe went through Allagash rapids with the bow stuck in the air, the stern dragging perilously close to the cold, rushing water.

It was a dark and stormy night when we dragged ourselves into Round Pond after a long day paddling. While the rest of us limped off to set up the soaking wet tents, Phil (a fabulous camp cook) set up the tarps and unveiled the back monster he kept hidden in the canvas bag. The process entails placing coals on the top of the device, which allegedly cooked the contents inside.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, Phil managed to turn out an edible (by camping standards) cherry cobbler. We toasted him in the rain for his inventiveness.

(If you have been camping in the rain, you must know that a broiled sneaker would also taste good under those circumstances … with a little ketchup.)

We have been paying for those toasts and congratulations ever since.

Last Saturday, at the traditional feast during the Patriots televised game, Phil showed up, then quickly disappeared into the barn. One interception and one touchdown later, Phil emerged from the now smoking barn, to announce that he had provided dessert.

Indeed, there in the barn, hard between the propane tank and the gasoline can, Phil had the glowing coals on the damned Dutch oven, with a reported peach cobbler inside.

Apparently the oven never got hot enough, because Phil would periodically bring in some doughy substance, flecked with peaches. He would ask us to complete a “taste test.” After three of those tests (it never did cook), my stomach turned from slurry into cement.

It stayed that way and got worse through the third quarter, the fourth quarter, the endless game analysis and the 6 o’clock news.

It stayed that way all through my birthday dinner at the Whale’s Tooth Pub in Lincolnville Beach. While others (e.g. Blue Eyes) dined on prime rib, broiled halibut and vegetarian pasta, I worked on digesting Phil’s cement cobbler.

But time heals all wounds and can even make a dent in Phil’s cement cobbler. As the evening wore on, I started to suspect I would live through the night … and actually got a little hungry.

Since Blue Eyes was paying for dinner, I thought I should have a little something, maybe some dessert and coffee.

At the Whale’s Tooth, they write the dessert menu on a blackboard. The waitress carried it over and set it before me.

As God as my witness, the first item on the chalkboard?

Peach cobbler.

I passed.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.