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
between the Gray margins 