Tonight I am spending my second night camping inside a building. The stars may be bright, but I certainly can’t see them. In fact, if I want to turn the nighttime into day, I just walk outside my trailer and turn on the building lights!



My trailer is inside a building because it is being worked on. All four wheels are off and the trailer is sitting on jacks. New axles and brakes are being installed. I am definitely excited about the new axles and brakes, but there are little things that are also getting fixed. Like that outside light bulb that I couldn’t get to. (That turned into a 2-hour job….there was a good reason why I couldn’t get to it.) And like that loose railing out in front. (That turned out to be a 5-minute job.)

Today, I stayed in the trailer and did my bill-paying and stayed available for questions from David and Denver. Tomorrow, I may go out and do some sight-seeing. But, it is looking like the project may be finished tomorrow. If it does turn out to take another day, that’s OK….I’ll just spend another night here!

Are you thinking that the heat might be a bit much? Please don’t worry…..the air conditioner is working great!

I’ll talk with you later.
Suzanne

(I’m still on my 3-day trip to northern Texas.)



This is my first experience to be with other people who are cooking with dutch ovens, and I certainly got some good ideas. A dutch oven is (usually) a cast iron pot with a lid that can hold charcoal and legs on the bottom for allowing charcoal to be underneath. You’ll see these ovens in the camping section of Wal-Marts or Targets or Academy Sports or go to the internet……lots of information there.

I bought my first dutch oven about nine years ago. I had been walking down the camping aisle of Target and looking at a 12-inch dutch oven for about three years. I had read about dutch ovens when I was in high school (like I had read about Biscuits-on-a-Stick) and had always wanted to try them. Well, after three years of looking at that 12-inch oven, I decided to just go ahead and buy the stupid thing and try it out with my Scuba diving club. (This club just happened to also like to go camping!)

Anyway, I bought the oven, seasoned it, and tried to out in Pennekamp State Park, Florida, on a scuba diving/camping trip. My first dish was called “Mt Diablo Mexicale Casserole”. I found this recipe on the internet from a Boy Scout website. It was basically a ground beef dish with luscious vegetables and spices added. And it had cornbread on top. The first time I lifted the lid to check on that cornbread, I couldn’t believe that the dutch oven really was working like an oven at home. The cornbread was actually browning. What a thrill! What fun!

When it was done, everyone digged in. I learned that a 12-inch oven could feed 12 women without any problem. (Of course, there were a few other things to nibble on since our club members tended to bring more food than a regular army could eat!) Anyway, I had no leftovers.

After that, I was hooked. I have cooked lots in my dutch ovens (I now own two 12-inch ovens)…..stews, fajitas, cakes, pies, cobblers, pizza pie, vegetables.

And now, here I am, in a place where other people also love to use dutch ovens. Who could have guessed?!?

Ya’ll take care,
Suzanne

(I’m still on my 3-day trip to northern Texas.)




Here is a picture of me closing a bag of self-lighting charcoal after adding some coals to our fire. Looks pretty innocent, doesn’t it?

Well, the reason that Bill took this picture is that I’m not just closing it. I’m really stopping the whole bag from bursting into flames!

I had just added charcoal to the canister to my right (notice the very hot flame). Well, the charcoal caught fire immediately and flamed up into the bag. YIKES!!

I threw the bag on the ground and promptly stood on the bag’s opening. After a few seconds, I peeked inside and could see that the smothering technique was working. So, I began tightly rolling the bag up so that no air could get to it. That’s when Bill took the picture. (There was no picture before because he was busy yelling……HEY, WATCH OUT!)

This story has a happy ending…..even a happy ending a la mode. This charcoal was used to cook an apple pie!

Ya’ll take care.
Suzanne

I have just spent three nights camping with friends at a lake in north Texas. It was a Corps of Engineers Campground, and it was gorgeous. We took this trip away from home so that two of our members could do a “shakedown trip” for their “new” trailer. (They have been renovating their trailer for about 6 months, and they wanted to see how it would do on a trip……it did great!)

One night we were sitting around the fire and just chatting when the subject drifted to food and the different ways that food could be prepared while camping. Betty said that an egg could be cooked in our campfire if it was in a Styrofoam cup filled with water. I thought about it for about a second and then said…..“prove it.” Well, we all thought that this would be fun to try. So, we got up and began gathering the materials. No one thought that they had Styrofoam cups so we started the experiment with Styrofoam bowls. They didn’t last long at all. They tilted immediately, and the water spilled out….leaving eggs just sitting in the fire and bowls melting away. Then, Cheryl remembered a cup that she had. We filled it with water, dropped in the egg, and put it right beside a burning log. AND IT DIDN’T MELT! The very top part of the cup melted, but that was all!

After about fifteen minutes, we pulled the egg out and peeled it…..a tad on the soft-boil side, but definitely cooked!

Look closely in that white Styrofoam cup, and you can make out the egg!


P.S. What happened to the other three eggs? Well, two did survive and could be peeled and eaten. The third one exploded!