Our Camping Menu

So I was definitely supposed to have this post up a LONG time ago, but I have been a little out of commission this past couple of weeks. I dropped a freaking 4 lbs weight on my toe about two weeks ago at my barre class, so I have been dealing with that, working at the museum, and this past weekend attended a wonderful wedding, but there should be no excuses. So, this post is going to be about the food we made and ate during our camping trip that we took at the beginning of the month. Now of course, this isn’t really true camping, we were not in a tent. We were in cabins and one of the awesome things about the cabins is they had a kitchen, so we were able to buy groceries before getting there and save a little money at the same time. As you all know I am new at blogging so I don’t have pictures of any the recipes I am talking about, but feel free to ask me any questions you have at all about the recipes (I promise I will get better at this)!

For breakfast, we kept it fairly simple, all the meals we had could be prepared in about 30 minutes or less. This was great because it allowed us to have a good breakfast and start our day early (it also allowed me to sleep in a little bit, which is a favorite thing of mine). The first day we did ham and cheese croissants, which consisted of three ingredients, ham, cheese, and croissants. We get our croissants from the bakery at our grocery store, we are a Kroger and HEB family, and we do the deli ham sliced at about a 1 and the Kraft American cheese singles. We cut the croissants and assemble them with the ham on one side and cheese on the other, and place them in the broiler. You do not have to put the croissant together until after it comes out of the broiler, but I will say that you will need to watch the croissant since the broiler is so hot. We usually cook them until we can see that the cheese is melted. I love this breakfast because the options are endless. The next day was the day we went hiking so we just ate cereal and fruit. On the day before we left we had sausage and egg breakfast tacos, another easy favorite of ours. Loren and I stumbled upon a little jewel a couple of months ago, it is in the refrigerated section and it is called Jimmy Dean Turkey Sausage Crumbles. The wonderful thing about them is they are already cooked, so for the tacos you can just throw them in the skillet and add the egg. We also had fruit everyday with our breakfast

For lunch, we bought sandwich stuff, so we had that for lunch each day. Again, something easy and we could take it down to the river with us.

For dinner, we had meals each night except our last night there. On the first night we were there we had fish tacos, which was perfect because they are so easy to prepare. We buy tilapia and cook it in a skillet with oil. My Dad found this really great slaw mixture to put on top of it. Dole makes it and it is the Chopped Asian Blend, and while it may not be exactly what you find at your local Mexican food restaurant, it sure does do the trick. To top off our tacos we slice avocado and make a chipotle ranch sauce to go on top. The chipotle ranch sauce is really easy to make, and you only need two ingredients, chipotle peppers and ranch dressing. You can get canned chipotle peppers at your grocery store; we buy the brand La Costeña. You only need about three to four peppers, and you need to make sure you open them up and clean the seeds out of the peppers; you can also chop the peppers into smaller pieces, which will be easier to mix when the time comes. After you clean and chop the peppers, put them into a blender or food processor and add the ranch dressing (we used hidden valley). Now I did not measure out exactly how much dressing i put in there, but I would start with at least a cup. The great thing about this sauce is that you can adjust the recipe to fit your family or crowd that you are cooking for. To garnish the tacos off we had slices of avocado to put on top. The next night we had steak, which was delicious! My Dad and Loren got ribeyes and we had baked sweet potatoes and a salad to go with it. Loren and my Dad cooked the steaks on the grill and we backed the potatoes in the oven; a fairly easy meal, but time consuming. For the last night, we had my absolute favorite meal, which is chicken spaghetti. My Dad makes the best chicken spaghetti and I so happen to have his recipe. I took a picture so I am going to go ahead and just upload the picture for everyone. Now, my dad does not put the pimento or peas in the recipe, but feel free to customize to fit the likes of your family.

Chicken Spaghetti Recipe

For dessert, I made blondie brownies that are like the blondie brownies from Applebee’s. They were super simple to make, and are the perfect dessert to have since they are so easy to serve and keep fresh for the week. I made an executive change to put white chocolate chips instead of chocolate chips, which the recipe calls for. Click on the link to go to the original post. The other dessert we had was strawberry shortcake. I love strawberries, especially paired with pound cake and cool whip. We added blueberries too, we were still living it up from the 4th of July.

So there you have it, our camping menu. Remember that this was my first food post, so it will only get better from here! Again, if you have any questions about any of the food don’t hesitate to ask.

Love always,

Amie

Mini Family Vacay

We made it back home! Loren and I have been out of town for a week now, but have made it back to Houston safely. If you read my very first post from earlier this week you noticed that we were in McAllen, TX. From there we made the trek up to the Hill Country to meet my wonderful parents for a short vacation.

Growing up, both Loren and myself have spent our fair share in the hill country, and now that we are married we get to spend time together and with our family in this area. It is a lot of fun showing each other where we used to travel and hang out before we met. This week we spent time in an area that is near and dear to the both of us. We stayed at some great cabins called Foxfire Cabins in Vanderpool, TX. There is not much to this quiet little town, but it is the perfect getaway for the weekend. It is about 35 miles from Bandera, TX, about 85 miles from San Antonio, and it takes us about 5 hours to there from Houston. Click here to see where we stayed!

Before we got to the cabins we made a stop at HEB to buy our groceries, which is a must whenever we go to the cabins. We usually eat out one meal while we are cabining, which is the great thing about being some place, on vacations, where you have your own kitchen, you can really save money that way. I will have a separate post about the food we cooked while staying at Foxfire. 

After arriving on Tuesday and all day Wednesday, we hung out at the Sabinal River which runs through the property. On Thursday, we got up pretty early and headed to Lost Maples State Natural Area to do some hiking. This park has some really beautiful areas and great hiking trails, but it is most known for its wonderful fall colors (yes you can actually find fall foliage in Texas). We ended up hiking about 10 miles, which for me is a huge accomplishment for me, considering I am a mix between city girl and country girl ( a little more city at times).

View from one of the scenic overlooks.

A cave we saw along the way.

Another gorgeous view from the hike.

It is amazing to see all the awesome rock formations.

Loren and I on the hiking trail.

I survived the hike and took a long shower, ate, and took an awesome nap when we got back to the cabins. 🙂 On Friday, we went into Bandera which is one of the bigger towns closest to the cabin. Both Loren and I have wonderful memories there and it was great to share those memories with each other. My mom and I love going into antique shops and Bandera has some great ones right off of the main street. One of the must sees there is Arkey Blue’s Silver Dollar Saloon, a true Texas honky tonk named after the singer and songwriter. They have a street level entrance, but the saloon is underground which is really cool. Inside, they have a juke box and an 8- track player and the floor is cover with wood chips for dancing. There is also a city park where we took a break and had our lunch that we packed; the park is seated along the Medina River.

My parents dancing at Arkey Blue’s.

Friday evening we ate an Mac and Ernie’s Roadside Eatery, which is an amazing restaurant in the small town of Tarpley, about 30 miles from where we were staying. Loren knows the owners of the restaurant and it has also been featured on Diners, Drive- Ins, and Dives, so it was a place my dad has been dying to go and try out. The food at this restaurant was absolutely amazing for being in the middle of no where. The atmosphere was great, you can sit inside or outside and they sell beer and wine or you can BYOB. I had the spicy crab cake with sriracha aioli for starters and then for my main entree I had the Yucatan style pork ribs. The crab cake was amazing, definitely a must for spicy lovers, and the ribs were so tender and the rub on them was so good. Loren got the chicken kebab with honey mustard glaze another great choice. All the entrees come with a salad and your choice of a baked potato or green beans. I got the baked potato and Loren got the green beans, and I would definitely recommend the green beans. The baked potato was good, but it wasn’t anything impressive, the green beans were way better. One of the specialties there is the honey basted quail, which is so freaking delicious and tender. It was by far one of the best meals I have had in a long time and is definitely worth the paragraph that I just wrote. Click here to visit their website for their menu and hours of operation.

We began the drive back home today, but not before stopping in New Braunfels to eat lunch at one of our favorite Mexican food restaurants, Herbert’s Taco Hut. The original Herbert’s is in San Marcos and is an absolute must restaurant to stop and get a bite to eat. I have never been to the one in New Braunfels, but let me just say it is awesome. It is a lot bigger than the one in San Marcos, but the food is just as good.

All in all we definitely enjoyed our mini vacay with the family, and we are glad to be safely back in Houston.

Love Always,

Amie

Fourth of July Weekend

During the summer Loren and I work at the Museum of Natural Science doing summer camps. The camps are two weeks teaching and one week off, so we were very lucky to have a long fourth of July weekend and the following week off, and we decided to visit Loren’s parents, who live in McAllen, TX.

Our trip down was very exciting, we are exchanging Loren’s car for a couple of weeks while his wonderful dad does some MAJOR work on it. First, there is no AC, it’s hot, it’s July, it’s Texas, and it takes 6 hours to get the valley (McAllen). So you can only imagine how much fun I was having packed into a car with our dog. Luckily we left at 5am so it wasn’t in the heat of the day, but still equally miserable. The drive was going as good as it could go until about 45 minutes from our destination when we got a flat tire, that is right a flat tire. Of course we happened to get this flat tire on the stretch of the trip with nothing around, so here we are with a flat tired, a hot dog, and now a hot wife. So we unpacked the car and Loren began to attempt to fix the tire while I was convinced that this is where we were going to die. We broke down on the side of a four lane highway so the cars where going pretty fast with some of them not changing lanes, which really ticked me off.

Lily and I on the side of the road waiting on Loren as he changed the tire.

About 30 minutes into our tire changing experience a Brooks County Sheriff pulled over, and believe me I have never been so happy to see a sheriff in my life. In the wonderful state of Texas it is the law to have an empty lane of traffic between you and the officer, so with him behind us the people who weren’t pulling over now had to, thank goodness. If you ever end up on the side of the road like that you should definitely call the non emergency line so they can have some sort of law enforcement agent come to assist you, if definitely put me at ease knowing if something happened at least there was someone else there with us. Soon after that we were back on the road and got to McAllen safely.

When we got to Loren’s parents they had an awesome lunch ready to go for us with even better desserts. After we ate, rehydrated, and showered we headed over to Loren’s grandma’s house to watch the fireworks. The fireworks are shot from the high school which is about two blocks from his grandma’s so it was the perfect place to set up. We cut up our watermelon and enjoyed the awesome fireworks.

Loren and I

Jacyln (Loren’s sister) and I

Funny Dad photo bomb

Photo with Grandma

Mom and her girls

We are so blessed to have such an amazing family and friends and it is always an adventure coming down here. We will be leaving tomorrow to meet my parents for the second part of our vacation, which you can be sure I will be posting about once we get back into Houston.

Love always,

Amie