Patty's famous low dirt camping cakes

We made it back from our epic outdoor adventure into the wilds of the nearby woods. We spent a lot of time on the road and I spent a lot of time preparing meals with a minimal amount of dirt in them. We slept in a tent (on an air mattress), and shared our blanket with the dog! I cooked meals, warded off chipmunks, and bathed in the cold lakes and rivers. It was a wonderful time.

We go camping quite a bit with my husband's family, and they have a camper. While this might feel like cheating to some, it is nice to have fresh baked cookies, and make muffins in the morning. Alas on this trip, we did not have a camper, and I had to come up with my own solution of how to create food in the out of doors. A large area of where we went camping is the desert. That means no camp fires, and that means that I have to be prepared, and that there will be windstorms blowing dust into your food.

I get frustrated with my husband's family and camping food. They eat the same meals every year. I know what we will be having: steak and potatoes, sausages (or hotdogs), spaghetti, and these meals are always the same. They never change, and when we have steaks, my father in law cooks them on a charcoal briquette grill. I often wonder why he has it, I mean other than emergencies, because he usually has a nice fire with a grill over it for us all to sit around. In recent years I have barged my way in and taken over breakfast, and we have new things! I experiment, apparently there have been grumblings, but if the kids got over that we're really there to hang out together and not eat food we could all have great food and hangout together at the same time.

It also detracts from the possibility of dutch oven food. How will I get my dutch oven and cook wonderful foods in it if everyone is a bitchy little whiny pants about how dinner has to be THESE THINGS and nothing else? Like it would kill us to have two different meals while we camp. For crying out loud, it's not like my mother in law is making spaghetti sauce, we're camping! She has better things to do, so it comes out of a jar! We could totally change that meal to something fun. I also think that the hot dog meal could be forfeited for something great and we could make a great experiment meal. We can have hot dogs any old time. On a side note I didn't get to make awesome dutch oven meals on this trip as it was a 'road trip' and we spent a lot of time on the roads. When will my dutch oven love be realized? I want to camp and slow cook things, and make dutch babies and cobblers and have stacks of dutch ovens all over the place!

Le sigh.

I made a simple plan for my husband and me. We had diner food or sandwiches for lunch, my husband doesn't really eat breakfast, so that was mostly for me, and for dinner I had a simple menu of things that don't take up a lot of space: Chili, spaghetti (I know, but it comes in a jar), hamburgers, sausage sandwiches, baked potatoes and corn, and lamb steaks one night. I'm sure we ate other things, but I don't know what they are. I did make a simple to cook menu, as I didn't have a lot of space to work with, and I don't have a camper. We shopped at local farm stores and we bought a lot of in season fresh corn.

If you want fresh corn you really need to go pick it yourself. If you can't make sure your corn is picked that day, and there are things you can do to check your corn without peeling it. The silk on the corn should be light in color and not dried out. The bottom of the ear should be freshly cut and white in color. When you grip the husk, it should feel firm, and the kernels should feel firmly packed. You should not have to peel down the husk of the corn and check the kernels. Corn is ideal for camping as you can keep it in the cooler for a day (maybe two, but I wouldn't) and have some that night. You don't need to shuck it or anything to cook it. Just set it on the edge of the fire and turn it until it's pretty black outside all over. It takes about 40 minutes to cook corn over a fire. One night we had fresh potatoes and corn for dinner, I baked the potatoes and corn in the fire. It was great. I didn't have to do anything hardly!

The meal I'm most proud of is one that my husband declared "extra fancy for camping". It starts at a largish town where I found a reliable source for lamb steaks. I also bought polenta in a tube, which is really ideal for camping being shelf stable until you open it, and great for all meals. We then struck out (on Friday) to find a great camping spot along the river. Being that we didn't really have a firm plan for where we were going, we didn't have reservations. Six full campsites and three hours later we were exhausted, grumpy, and the dog had to pee. We declared that we were going to stay at the next available place, and if we had to, find a motel and sneak the dog in (she might be a little spoiled). Finally we came to a very small town, and passed by one very scary looking RV park, and one nice RV park. We went to the latter, as it didn't scream murder park at us. It was a nice park, but we were the only ones without an RV. I made a great dinner and that is what I will tell you about now.

I do have a nice propane stove, it has one burner and a grill on it. Being that you just never know, it is nice to have the grill built in. You can't always have fires, and the grill is so handy for any meat you want to cook. Bacon, burgers, steaks, sausages, whatever. The menu I had planned was salad (freshly bought) with dressing and cucumber I had bought from a farm stand. I picked up rosemary and mint, plain polenta and lamb steaks. I had a multi-spice - never camp without one - and some butter. I had also acquired a head of garlic from the farm stand as well.

I know many people don't like lamb, and that the flavor bothers them. The real thing is that you have to treat it right. The fat of lamb has a strong flavor, and it's best if you trim some of it off. Also you shouldn't over cook lamb, as it becomes tough quickly. It's also best to season lightly, unless you're making curry, and really you should be using mutton for curry and not lamb.

Ingredients:

3 cloves of garlic minced - divided
2 Tbs. butter - divided
2 lamb leg steaks
1 rosemary sprig, minced
2 mint sprigs, minced
salt and pepper
1/2 tube plain polenta

Method:

Mix together 1 Tbs butter, salt, 1/2 of the garlic, and all of the rosemary and mint. Set aside. In a pan heat the remaining butter and garlic. Slice the polenta into slices about 3/4 of an inch thick. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and place in the pan over medium high heat. Cook them for about 4-5 minutes on each side, until they are golden brown. Divide onto plates.

Heat your grill to a high heat. Sprinkle the lamb with salt and pepper and place over the heat. Depending on the thickness of the steaks about 2-3 minutes on the first side and 2 on the second side should be sufficient for a propane grill. Never cook past medium rare. I prefer my lamb rare, and I usually take a look early on (by that I mean I cut into a bit of the lamb and take it off the heat early. Remember you can always cook the meat more, you cannot cook it less. So check early, and go for less done than you think it should be). When you are nearing the last minute of cooking divide the herb butter into two pats and place one pat on each steak. Remove the steak from the heat and let it rest for 10 minutes. Serve with salad and the polenta.

Tiny pickles

I love pickles. Every time I bite into a pickle my mouth puckers and I know it's going to be sour and delicious. We used to go to this restaurant, the Capitol Club, and they served hummus with a variety of pickles that included beans and cauliflower. I've not seen this on the menu for a long time, but it was one of my favorite things to eat. The pickles were a little spicy and the hummus was good. It can be hard to find good commercial pickles, as I think they tend to over cook the vegetables, or just don't brine them correctly. We're going away for about a week, so I won't be posting. I also looked at my garden and picked a head of broccoli that I knew wouldn't make it until we got back. I found .. TA DA! Four beans ready to pick and thought that the fractal broccoli that I had been growing would make pretty pickles.

I have always like bread and butter pickles. They are one of my favorites, apart from pickled beets. I poked around in a canning book my mother had given me, that I'm not really a huge fan of. They make things with lots of sugar, jam that has more sugar than fruit, all of the pickles are equal parts vinegar and sugar, sugar, sugar. That goes right to my hips! Besides, I can handle my vinegar, can you?

Anyhow I've made up my own pickle called the Bread and Broccoli Pickle. It's like a bread and butter pickle, but really not at all. I encourage you to break free from traditional pickles, as I have. Later today I will be pickling the four beets I have and I will be using balsamic vinegar in them. They make a wonderful beet salad later in life if you do that.


Ingredients:

1 head of fractal broccoli florets
1 small sliced onion
1 tsp. mustard seed
4-6 allspice berries
6 black peppercorns
a dash of ginger
1 clove
4 green beans
2 C. raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar
1 C. sugar
1/4 C. Splenda
1 tsp. salt

Method:

Wash everything. Get your jars ready and heat them in the oven at 225. Put your lids and rings in a hot water bath and get a hot water bath ready for your jars. In a large sauce pan cook the sugar, vinegar, salt and spices together until the sugar is dissolved. Add the onion and broccoli and cook until the broccoli is bright green. Turn off the heat and add the onions. Pull one jar out at a time, with a slotted spoon scoop the vegetables into the jars and then pour over the hot liquid. Wipe the rims and put on the lids and rings. Water bath for about 10 min.

Oh crepe!

I know I haven't been posting much, but I ran into a slew of social engagements that took over my cooking time. Alas, it happens.

This last weekend I scooted on down to the local market, they hold one every Sunday. There you can find all sorts of good things. Now these prices might seem a little higher to you, but you have to take some things into account. The farmers are the ones sitting there, selling their goods. They have to pay for those stalls, and transport. It's nice to be able to find things you would never find in the store. You can buy local fresh pastured meat, fresh baked breads, local in-season produce, sometimes plants, cheeses, and there's a creamery that comes too. This last week I noticed a mushroom hunter selling porcini mushrooms. Wild mushrooms... delicious. I bought just a few and a leek. I felt like Julia Child as I slow cooked the mushrooms and leek and then added my half and half to make a delicious crepe dinner. I also procured some chevre at the market and put that into the crepes as well. The result was two types of crepes, one filled with cheese and the other filled with a great mushroom sauce.

I'm sure you can make crepes, there's recipes out there if you look. You just need to decide which one is for you. I cannot tell you which one to use, or give you tips and tricks or tell you blah, blah, blah. I will tell you that I make my crepes in a cast iron pan. The joy of cast iron, it's wonderful stuff, but you must NEVER EVER put soap on it. Use salt to clean it, even when you've made a sauce in it. If you use soap you will pull off the layer of built up fats and then your food will stick to your cast iron pan. Put salt into the pan, get a paper towel, or rag and put your pan over medium high heat. Let it heat up and rub the salt into the pan and it'll get gross and brown. Wipe out the salt and your pan is now clean. This is the approved method of keeping your pan nice. No water baths. No soap. No air drying.


Ingredients:

8 crepes
1/3 lb fresh wild porcini mushrooms
1 small leek
2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 C. non-homogonized organic half and half
1 Tbs. flour
1/2 Tbs butter
1 pinch nutmeg
salt and pepper
2 oz. organic chevre

Method:

Put the butter, diced mushrooms, thinly sliced leek and garlic in a sauce pan over low heat. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally for 20 min. Do not let the vegetables brown. Add the flour to the pan and stir cooking for about 5 minutes. Heat the half and half and slowly add to the sauce. Check for seasoning, adding the nutmeg and some salt and pepper.

Divide the chevre into four portions and crumble. In four crepes put a spoon of the sauce on one half of the circle. Fold over the other half and then fold in half again. Repeat this with the chevre and plate. Put a little of the mushroom sauce on the mushroom crepes.

Brisket success!

Yesterday evening we had some people over to eat our smallish brisket. It was only six pounds and for all the work I think that if I was going to do that again I would defiantly buy more brisket to cook all at once. I went to Costco to get the brisket and it was the biggest one they had. I think you might be able to get a full one from a butcher on special order, but that usually takes about two weeks and not two days of planning. I would think it would be better to get a brisket from a grass fed cow, as it's a strongly flavored piece of meat. All that connective tissue - the flavor would stand out better if your cow was grass fed. But on the other hand if you're going to get a brisket and you need one now, Costco or Cash and Carry have them, but I would still recommended that you get at lease 15 lbs of brisket. We had ten people over and there is only a tiny little bit of brisket left, not really enough for more than a couple sandwiches. Which is fine; but for all that work it would be nice to have something more left. Ahh well live and learn that making brisket is more time consuming than you thought. If you do take my suggestion and make a lot of brisket at once the leftovers could be pulled, mixed with BBQ sauce and then frozen in individual sandwich size servings.

Part of the reason we had anything left at all is because I made sure to make lots of other food. I did make my friend-famous baked beans, a green salad and I made up some quick bread. I was going to make corn bread but I didn't have enough corn meal, so I mixed in what I had and used Malt-O-Meal to make a good grainy bread. A couple friends brought over some corn and kebabs and others brought chips so there was plenty to eat. I also made up some strawberry shortcakes with berries from my mom's berry patch and whipped some cream from the Golden Glen Creamery.

I am going to give you the baked bean recipe. You can look up how to cook briskets, and I mostly followed the directions from The Joy of Cooking. They have a whole section on how to smoke a brisket, and well you must know where the internet is. I used the peppery rub and made a basic mop from Strongbow cider and raw apple cider vinegar. You can figure it out, I believe in you.

Ingredients:

1 pound organic white great northern beans
2/3 C. organic molasses
1/2 C. organic ketchup
2 Tbs. mustard
1 Tbs. garam masala
1 chopped onion
2 tsp. minced garlic
1 smoked organic ham hock
organic Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbs. Peppery Rub mixture (see Joy of Cooking)
organic chicken stock

Method:

Rinse and pick over the beans. Put them in a big bowl of water and let them set over night. The next day pour off the water and rinse your beans. Place in a large pot and cover with 3 inches of water. Simmer for one hour, or until the beans are tender, but not super soft. Strain your beans.

When you buy your ham hock ask the butcher to slice it for you, or you will have to cook your beans a lot longer. Put the ham hock in the crock pot and then cover with everything else. Stir well but be sure that the hock is covered. Cook on low for around 5 hours. Pick out the ham hock pieces and let them cool on a plate for a few mintues. With two forks shred the hock meat, compost any bones, skin and fat chunks. Return the meat to the beans and taste them. Check for final seasoning and keep warm until you are going to serve them.

Barbecue sauce can be made by girls.

My dad makes great BBQ sauce, it's truly amazing. It's sweet, tangy and tastes like Jack Daniels. He makes a good sauce for finishing, and really that's what we in the northwest like, finishing BBQ sauce. We like to brush it on our chicken and burgers and dip crap in it like meat nuggets.

Every time the subject of BBQ comes up around women I get this sad pit in my stomach. They seem to hold the opinion that girls don't like fire, can't start a fire and that women are crappy at BBQing (oh, I leave that to my husband, I just don't know how it works). How do you not know how that works? It's a stove and oven together! Think of it as a big stoven! My husband usually does start the fire, but I can and often do, start fires. I like fire too. I like to get out my stick and poke at things. I like to burn things to see them turn to ash. Women also like fire. And women can barbecue if they want, but you have to have three things: a good fire, a good sauce, and patience.

Tomorrow I'm going to smoke a brisket. MMMmmmm brisket. I will be preparing a rub and a mop today and I am making a BBQ sauce for dipping or slooshing or just eating.

I looked at a bunch of recipes, and none of them seemed very good. The one major flaw I noticed was that they all took under 30 minutes. My dad cooks his sauce forever, and it gets better after it sits for a month or so. Also many of them seemed like ketchup that's been flavored. Gross out, you might as well go get a bottle of HFCS infested Kraft Krap. I know many good recipes come from ketchup, but it's not the true way, it's the cheater's way, and if my dad's a cheater, well he's a real good one then.

I made this the way I make everything, I looked at a bunch of recipes, poked through the fridge and pantry, formulated a vague plan and went in and did what I want, tasting as I go along.

Here is a little note about me. I don't buy brown sugar, it's a scam. Brown sugar is made from white sugar and has the molasses mixed back into it. It comes in the lamest packages (boxes? really?) and dries into a hard brick before you can use it all. Do what I do, I buy molasses and use a mixture of molasses and sugar accordingly. Even when I make cookies, I just measure out all in white sugar and add a few tbs of molasses. So if it seems like a lot of molasses that's because a lot of the recipes called for brown sugar and molasses.

I will tell you what I did, but I want you to use your noggin here. When I go to a Thai restaurant I ask for all the stars. When someone says that they have a seven alarm burn your tongue off wing sauce, I sneer and eat it and it's really not that hot. I eat whole pickled jalapenos. I use habaneros without discretion, and I don't devein them or remove the seeds. Keep that in mind.

Ingredients:

1/2 large Mayan sweet onion well chopped
3-5 cloves of garlic, depending on size- minced
1 diced jalapeno
1/2 C. organic, unfiltered, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar
1/2 C. organic molasses
1/2 C. organic sugar
1 can organic tomato paste
1 C. organic chicken stock
1 pinch coarse sea salt
1 tsp. cayenne powder
several dashes of organic Worcestershire sauce
grape seed oil

Method:

In a sauce pan heat a small amount of oil over medium heat. Add the onions and cook slowly, without browning until they are almost translucent. Add the jalapenos and garlic and cook until the onions are transparent and the jalapenos are bright green. Add the tomato paste and chicken stock to the pan and stir until thick.

Add the rest of the ingredients and lower the heat. Taste and adjust the sweetness or sourness with vinegar as needed. Cook over a low heat for a couple hours until the sauce is good and thick.

Store in clean jars in the fridge.

Are we eating this again?

Leftovers, the continual question of the cook: What do I do with this now? I dislike having leftovers as my husband usually won't eat them. It takes talent and endless thinking of what to do with last night's dinner, transform it and come up with something new. Sometimes it's really exhausting and frustrating. Why can't I cook every other night? Why must I spend time in the kitchen, cooking, cleaning, thinking, preparing and continually making new food? Why can't I make a lasagna out of the spaghetti sauce from a couple nights ago? I will tell you why, it's because some people think that food should be new and exciting all the time. Well it's not. Casseroles came about because no one wants to try to cook two portions of something every night, it's hard to make two portions, it's much easier to make four portions of something and serve it the next night. Not me though, I get the joy and pleasure of a mild 'yeah, it's good' for all my efforts. I spend around two or three hours a day in the kitchen cooking dinner. I spend another hour cleaning. If I make a quick dinner, I almost always know that my husband will not be real excited about it. Heaven forbid I want a night off and would just like to not spend my day in the kitchen.

Now my husband is pretty nice about it all, but it's frustrating to serve dinner, have him eat just a little and I'm right back where I started. With a lot of leftovers. Though if I make a lot of meat that seems to disappear the first night, and then I have nothing to cook with. This is a no win situation. Also only some meats seem to hold up to the leftovers challenge. If they're lean, they won't reheat well, drying out and getting gross.

I say to this NO MORE! No more will I take it. Eat it or starve! I am not a short order cook, I am not your waitress! The problem with my little tirade is that my husband happens to be a grown man and grown men often do what they want. He can go to the store, he can open cans of chili - which incidentally - why are some people the messiest cooks ever? How do they use so many pots and spoons to make chili from a can? How does he get chili there?

What do we do with our left overs? This is going to be a continuing subject here, because it's one the frugal chef wrestles with on a weekly level. Being that I don't have five kids to just eat up what I make, I must revive and make new something each night for me and my husband. I do think though, that it is better than trying to cook for one.

You may have guessed, if you read back a bit, I have a lot of Chinese BBQ pork. It's been sliced and refrigerated so it's getting a bit dry, the solution is sauce. I made a sweet and sour - cuz it's pork! - stir fry today, and I didn't pull anything out of my garden because I had veggies in my fridge, slowly decaying and needing to be used before I go for the fresh good stuff. I should just throw them out, but when you pick a head of cabbage are you really going to eat it all today? That sounds like it could be uncomfortable in an intestinal way. Really also, there's nothing wrong with them. I did pour things into a measuring cup today so I have a vague idea of what I did too. This is an easy sweet and sour recipe. I think leftover recipes should be easy, I already labored once, this time I'm laboring less.

Ingredients:

1 sliced onion
1 quarter head of cabbage thinly sliced
1 bell pepper sliced
2 tsp. minced garlic
1 handful sweet peas
1/2 lb. Chinese BBQ pork - sliced
1/2 C. Brown rice vinegar
1/2 C. Soy sauce
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 squirt of ketchup
1/2 tsp. sesame oil
1/2 C. chicken stock
2 spoons splenda or sugar
1 Tbs. Corn starch
1 tsp. red chili flake
Anything else you might find in the fridge - hoysin, rooster sauce, saracha chili and garlic, honey, green onions, carrots, kimchee, whatever.

Method:

Cook up some rice.

Slice, or don't slice the pork some more, big chunks are easy to wrangle with chop sticks, small chunks look nicer and then you can wrap everything in moo shoo pancakes. Mix the vinegar, soy sauce, ginger, ketchup, oil, stock, sugar and starch together and set aside.

Heat a wok or large pan and put a little oil in. Throw in your onions for about five minutes, add cabbage and garlic. Cook these until the cabbage cooks down and the onion is getting a little brown. Add the peas, pepper and pork and toss. Then add the sauce mixture and turn down a bit. Cook this stirring until the sauce thickens and turns clear.

Serve with rice, makes four servings.