The Food

A big part of any trip for me is the food, which made me appreciate the variety of meals we shared with my aunt and uncle.  I also learned the value of preparing ingredients at home!  On the first morning, my aunt served bisquits and gravy.  She had cooked the sausage and made the bisquits ahead of time, so all she had to do was make gravy from a dry mix and stir in the sausage.  The second morning, my uncle made huckleberry pancakes using berries they'd picked before we arrived.

 

Each family brought everything for their own drinks and lunches: standard fare sandwiches.  We shared chips and desserts.

We made dinner the first night.  It would have gone well if the water had not refused to boil!  We're still not sure what the problem was, but it may have been black stuff on the bottom of the pan from the cooking stove.  Other than that, I was pleased with the reception.  Some of us had third and fourth helpings!  This is a recipe we make at home that was easy to adapt to camping.  All we needed was a big pan to cook everything in!  (Recipe at bottom of post.)

The second dinner was spaghetti.  Easy peasy!  She had canned green beans on the side.  We usually make our sauce from Prego, but I like how her canned sauce tasted, Del Monte Traditional.  It was a nice change!  She also had a couple containers of croissant dough from the store.  She wrapped the triangles of dough around our sticks, and we cooked them over the fire.  They didn't get done all the way through, but they were REALLY tasty.  I actually like the doughy interior, made them taste sweeter.

We brought evaporated milk to make warm drinks, but we didn't need to!  My uncle whipped up a batch of homemade 4-ingredient huckleberry ice cream one evening, and my aunt put out the makings for smores the next.  She also taught us how to heat Starbursts over the fire!  I'd never heard of such a thing!  You just push the end of the stick into the center of a Starburst, and heat it until it gets hot.  Wait for it to cool a bit, and eat.  I tried every color but found my favorite was the red ones.  It becomes soft and gets a sort of slighly crunchy outside.  Yum!

Speedy Chicken Noodle Bowl ~ Serves 8
16 oz angel hair pasta, uncooked
5 cups carrots and broccoli
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken, cooked and chopped
1 bottle Kraft Asian Toasted Sesame Dressing
5 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Put enough water in a large pan to cook pasta and veggies.  Bring water to a boil.  Add carrots, boil 1 or 2 minutes.  Add broccoli, boil 3 more minutes.  Add pasta, and boil 4 minutes.  Drain.  Stir in remaining ingredients.  We panfried and chopped the chicken before we left as well as cleaned and cut up the veggies.  All three can be stored in their own container/bag and kept in the cooler until ready to use.