one last yurt post.....

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The last post dedicated to camping food....I don't have any pictures of the food, because the only one that I didn't brutally underexpose has me looking like a right twit. So you don't get to see it. ;)

On day 2, we had a fabulous dinner of grilled fish, spanish rice and pico de gallo. I again cut a few corners to accommodate the requirements of preparing a meal with only a fire and coleman stove.....

Pico de Gallo (I forgot the jalopenos at home, so this version doesn't have any!)
2 plum tomatoes, chopped
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 c coriander, chopped
juice of 1 lime
salt to taste

1. Combine tomato, onion, garlic, coriander and lime. Taste and add salt until you like it. This can be used as a dip for chips (yummy) or to top chicken or fish.

We served it with rainbow trout that hubs grilled over the fire. Yum.

For the rice, I actually have a fear of cooking rice without a rice cooker, and I wasn't going to be so lame as to bring one on our trip (especially because I've made fun of people for doing the exact same thing before...hehe....seriously, I was tent camping a couple of years ago, and these people brought their rice cooker and were using it in the bathroom! gross!!!!!!) Anyway...to get over this fear, and also the fact that my coleman isn't big enough for both a pot and pan, I cheated. NOt sure if this is lamer than using a rice cooker in a public bathroom....you be the judge.

I ended up using Uncle Ben's bistro express rice (I think this is called ready rice in the States). It's the SUPER lazy rice that you don't even have to cook....you just open the package and head it. I bought the long grain and wild flavour with fine herbs. To make it tasty, I blackened vidalia onion and chopped red pepper, and then added the rice with a touch of lemon and water. It flavoured up nicely. Tasted awesome with the fish and pico.

We ended up snacking all day on the third day, so didn't really have lunch. Dinner was king crab legs over the fire....this was also amazing. I served it with garlicky melted butter. Total yum.

So that's it for the stories of yurting and yummy food......despite the lack of running water, we had a great time. I read two books, slept a ton and spent some great quality time with hubs. We even went on a bit of a hike and didn't manage to get lost and become headlines (I have these only semi-irrational fears of being one of those stupid people who go out unprepared and get lost in the woods). But we didn't get lost, though we did climb some pretty darn steep hills through the snow.

And hubs snapped this, which turned out better than my attempts at yurt photography....


And of course this is all before the nasty-ass winter weather bomb that whipped its way through here today. Glad that's over....I was scared to go outside and there were over 200 traffic accidents in the city. Good day to stay home, if you ask me.

Thanks for reading!

cast iron is the way to go

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Despite owning several teflon pans, I will freely admit that this material kinda scares me. It flakes off after a short-ish amount of time and I can't imagine that ingesting those little bits is in any way, shape or form, good for me.

I finally bought myself a cast iron pan a couple of months ago (broke it in on my tarte tatin!) and it seemed the logical choice to bring on our camping expedition.

Not having had our fill of red meat the night before, we opted for a second steak meal - not filet mignon this time though.....just a sirloin medallion, which hubs grilled.

I used the handy cast iron pan to grill peppers, onion and garlic to add to provolone and make a sort of cheese steak sandwich, which we feasted on out in the snow.

There isn't really much of a recipe for this - it's just as a simple as peppers, butter, onion, garlic and pepper, and steak seasoning for the steak. Yummy!



Yum. Clearly, we don't like out steak to be well done.

Breakfast was equally yummy.........back bacon (or Canadian bacon, as it's known in the states), free range eggs, leftover potatoes as hashbrowns, fresh melon and blackberries, orange juice and yummy, yummy coffee. Making coffee while camping can be a little bit of a challenge for those of us accustomed to an electric coffee maker.....I used to depend on a melitta drip filter for camp coffee......but a couple of unfortunate clumsy incidents led me to believe that really wasn't the best idea....so now I've brought my melitta to work (because that's clearly a better idea...hahahaha). Anyway, for Christmas, we got a bodum-esque coffee maker and it's great for camping. Love it.



The morning light did very strange things to the steam coming off the coffee.....you could actually see all the little particles. I was transfixed, so hubs started snapping away.....



Coffee is very important for camping.

return to ancestral roots

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I apologize for the dearth in posting lately - I was far away in the wilds of Algonquin Park celebrating my first wedding anniversary with hubs. In a return to ancestral roots, we celebrated the anniversary of our wintry wedding in classic Canadian style.....camping!

It's been a great year and we COMPLETELY and totally lucked out with our weather - at a balmy -3C during the day, we were practically sunbathing.

Granted, the fact that it went down to -20C at night was a little less exciting, and I was even less stoked to find out they decided to perform "maintenance" on the only running water in the place, and hence took away my nice warm, flushy toilets and left me to deal with a cold yucky (and oh so ickily-named) 'vault' toilet. A vault, eh?

Technically, I should be at work today and not writing this (especially as I only worked one day this week....), but I awoke to the sound of ice pellets grinding down my windows in gale-force winds and decided that I just really really REALLY could not stomach making the the 10-minute trek to the bus stop, only to wait fruitlessly in the blizzard and never have the blasted bus show (rule of thumb - if it's nice out, the bus will show, if it sucks, well, it sucks to be you because you are OUT in the cold).

SO I'm at home, still in my jammies. I did do some work, but as I'm not really going to call this 'working from home' I thought I would blog about my nice wintry trip. Of course, I'm a bit of a knob when it comes to packing, so I forgot the camera battery charger at home....pics are limited and of extremely mediocre quality.....one flourescent tube really does NOT make for ideal photography.......

Anyway.....we arrived on Sunday the 25th (our anniversary!) and celebrated in style with filet mignon, peppercorn sauce, potatoes over the fire and a robust yummy bordeaux.

For the steak, it was simply seasoned with montreal steak spice and cooked to perfection over the fire by hubs. I will confess that the peppercorn sauce came from a packaged mix......it was easy and somewhat tasty, though once you've had the yummy homemade stuff, it really doesn't compare.

But the potatoes are amazing, and make for fabulous hash browns when they are leftover. :)

Potatoes over the fire
Serves 2, plus hashbrown leftovers!

2 very large potatoes
1 small onion
2 T butter
1 t fleur de sel (yes, I brought fleur de sel camping)
1 clove garlic, minced
pepper
heavy-duty foil

1. Take one large piece of foil, and spray with non-stick cooking spray (or just oil it). Cut the potatoes into 1/2 inch pieces and place in the centre of the foil.
2. Chop the onion relatively finely (it seems like a lot, but always cooks down!) and sprinkle over top of the potatoes.
3. Add the minced garlic, and cut the butter in small pieces, spreading them somewhat evenly on top of the potato/onion mixture. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
4. Seal completely in the foil. Wrap with two more layers of foil (in my experience, this keeps the potatoes from searing themselves to the foil). Cook over the fire for about 30 minutes, flipping every 5-7 minutes. Enjoy with sour cream.

Please excuse the inferior pictures.....


Doesn't make it less yummy!

So I'll leave you with a good picture, but it isn't one I took....this one is from our wedding last year, taken by Frank Fenn, after the snow finally stopped coming down!