"Loved-up"

You know, among friend it’s always fun to give each other a hard time now and then.
Cami sometimes likes to do that to me about the fact that for the most part I don’t like to share a lot of things that have to do with bodily fluids – Like cups, forks, Air space that contains sneeze particles – you know stuff like that.

I wasn’t even always like this. I used to share food and air space with anyone. I think this happened sometime during the Robert era. He definitely had germ issues and it has stuck! Maybe this will be more therapy that I thought for myself! - Therefore- the following:

I learned a new term this week “loved-up” is a trail word .. in the fictitious trail dictionary it might read something like: Loved-up: A Term used to describe the process of food preparation wherein lieu of cutting, chopping, or dicing the food is put into a trail-walker or young walkers mouth and masticated to in turn be spewed back out into the camping cup to be cooked then eaten at a later time with the rest of the cooked ingredients. Such as: The dried tomatoes were loved-up while preparing the lasagna.

So, this is not a process that I am the most excited about… The other walkers think it’s pretty funny and already like to give me a hard time about it. Tuesday on the trail Ramsey said to me – “hey Jera, would you love this up for me?” while handing me a clove of garlic. I gave him my best and most sincere “ Are you kidding me right now?” face, and the words came with it. He continued “ Aw, come on you can do it” - I told him no, but thanks anyway. Then he went back to Dawn- “Hey Dawn, Will you love this up for me?” She said Sure! And within seconds the garlic was ready for our rice.
I told them they could definitely skip putting it in mine, that I won’t love-up my own food yet, let alone am I ready for someone else’s lovin’. – All this protest while they scooped “my” share onto my rice uggggggggggg. I was struggling with that.

In a few minutes, the rice was ready. I asked Jonathan if he wanted to “share my rice”? He said yes! Awesome. Needless to say I gave him the generous sized top portion before I mixed in the loved up garlic –so I escaped garlic loven’ this time..
Something tells me I might not make it out of this without some loving up at some point -
It’s pretty common on the trail to love-it up then share whatever is in the cooking process among trail walkers. After Dawn had finished – Ramsey said “ Thanks! I NEVER love up garlic!” haha – Dawn smelled like garlic for two days I am sure.