Tuesday, July 10th
After a short but steep 40-mile ride, we arrived at the home of Byron Ames, mayor of Francis, Utah. He was an avid cyclist himself, and he welcomed us in and offered to help us clean our bikes. Brian, Alex, and I volunteered for that job, while the girls took care of dinner for the night.
Less than 5 minutes in, just after we had carried the bikes to the yard, the girls marched out and past us, declaring, "We're switching jobs, you guys try to make dinner" without more than a glance at us.
We looked at each other for a second, puzzled, then agreed with a nod to take their challenge.
Scanning the ingredients, we laid out potatoes, garlic, onions, and black beans. Fortunately, Byron's son, River, came to the rescue, offering us literally everything in their kitchen; we collected coconut curry sauce, brown rice, and cherry tomatoes, putting together a curry-chili-stew-jambalaya-dish. We had to keep up the incompetent-men act, however, so we sent River to report that we were cooking oatmeal and apples.
To further throw off the scent, we led the meal with a carefully plated 'Deconstructed Fig Bar.' It had the desired effect, bringing lots of laughter while perpetuating their doubt in our ability to cook. Then, we brought out the true meal, and they were in utter disbelief. It was accompanied by banana-orange-peach smoothies in wine glasses with sugar-coated rims - the cherry on top of the whole meal. We finished the meal by dropping off the bill, written by River himself, as our one final joke.
Déconstructed Fig Bar
This may be the most confident blog post yet, and I apologize if it comes off as cocky. But we, The Boys, put our thought, time, and effort into impressing The Girls, and I do believe we succeeded.
They didn't think we could do it
~The Boys