Deep Creek 2017

For the third year in a row, we went to Deep Creek to spend MLK weekend with some of my high school friends and their kids.

One of the highlights of the weekend, for me, was getting to break in this gigantic camo onesie,
gifted to me by Cooper's Aunt Noreen. It was both enormous and very, very warm.
But it was not slimming.

It was a meat-and-cheese fest, as it is every year. We start on Friday night, with meatballs from Mastellone's, and don't look back. Chili, tacos, burgers and steaks, sausage and bacon at every breakfast. And literally a pound of cheese available for every single person in the house, including those who are still in diapers. It's fabulous.

It's also a game-fest. We don't do a whole lot while we're there, but we do play board games. One of this year's hits was Speak Out, that game that gets so much play online because it involves weird dental torture devices that hold your mouth open.

It is hilarious, but also very, very creepy. And I'm pretty sure those devices are at least part of the reason why several of the people in the house (including Cooper) closed out the weekend with the stomach flu. Germs, people. Germs.

Though the weekend as a whole is a blast - how bad can it be when it's filled with meat, cheese, booze and board games? - one of our food-related highlights actually occurred before we even made it to the house.

On our way, just about five miles out, in the town of Accident, Cooper and Dixon and I made a quick pit stop at the FireFly Farms store. As is typical, pretty much everyone coming for the weekend had forgotten at least one thing in their travels. Like crackers. we were about to enter a house with massive amounts of cheese...but no crackers.

For whatever reason, I didn't immediately make the connection between the name of the store and the cheese that I often pick up at Atwater's and see on menus all over Baltimore. But as soon as we walked into the shop, we made the connection.

It's super cute, with an excellent selection of cheese (both from FireFly Farms itself and from other makers), plus tons of wine, a handful of locally made stuff (think Popsations popcorn and Snake Oil hot sauce) and, yes, crackers.

While I can't, in good conscience, recommend drinking the Maryland blueberry wine we picked up, I do think it might make for a nice ingredient in a savory dish. And I can recommend just about everything else in the place. We walked out with our arms full and big smiles on our faces.

Those smiles stayed planted all weekend long (until the stomach flu reared its ugly head...fortunately, the weekend was almost over by then). I'm already looking forward to next year.