A Deviled Christmas Eve

It had been a long day.  We had left Adelaide over seven hours before.  Fortunately, the winds of the south had arrived bringing cloud cover and relief from the blistering heat of the day before.  The shimmering road and its constant snake like movement had taken us across a wheat belt--the once golden fields were now bleached white by the intense summer sun.  Just outside of Logan--a bar and caravan park--the landscape changed.  We entered a haven of eucalyptus, iron-box, and tea trees.  The undeveloped land--littered only with thousands of granite boulders--was a lush green island surrounded by  a rippling, colorless sea.
It was early Christmas Eve and we had arrived at Kooyoora State Park, our final destination for the night.  We were prepared for the sign that awaited us at the gate, Total Fire Ban Day.  It had been announced in every small town that we had passed through since our arrival in Eastern Victoria.  Our vision of warm Posole and Tamales (the preferred Christmas Eve Fare of my querido Nuevo Mexico) heated on the camp stove, had been left behind far behind in Nhill.  During the several hundred kilometer drive across the state, we had mentally prepared ourselves to face a holiday meal of deviled ham sandwiches with a side of crisps.

Though prepared for the ban, we were surprised to find that we would have company that evening.  At the other end of the campground a family of three generations sat huddled around a table swatting at the millions of flies that buzzed around them.  As I watched them from a distance, I couldn't help but wonder if they had been caught off guard by the fire ban.  Were they better prepared with salads and a baked chicken, or were they faced with potted meat as well?

As I pulled out the jar of what claimed to be a tasty spread, I was happy to know that a lack of fire couldn't rob us of our New Mexican and Spanish traditional Christmas Eve Polvorones and Biscochitos.