Friday, August 14, 2009

My kind of camping

A few weeks ago we decided to go camping. This was all decided on, I believe, a Thursday night or Friday morning, and we went on Friday night. So there was a lot of grabbing and dumping into the car when we came home from work on a Friday night ! As we were driving out of the driveway, it started to sprinkle...which meant tears from the back seat because I had previously told Meredith that the only reason we would stay home was if it rained. We kept on driving and were out of the rain almost immediately.

It was during a cold spell (yes, in JULY) so there were still many spaces left in the campground (we went to Kent Park.) Of course, we had to drive around at least twice to scope out the best campsites. Does anyone else do that or is it just us?? We found a really nice spot with enough space for our very large tent. Jim and Bev gave us a tent last summer but we hadn't used it yet. It was great! So Kent and the kids got the tent set up right away,


and I got to work building the fire.


Once the tent was set up, it was big enough that both kids had plenty of room to play in it.


After our supper of tinfoil dinners, (which were so yummy, why don't we make those at home on the grill for a change in pace??) Kent and the kids left to go get water to wash the dishes while I cleaned the other supper stuff up.


Later, after the kids both had fun making faces for pictures,


we had what we called hand pies. I don't know what they are really called, but that's the name we gave them. Basically it's 2 buttered pieces of bread with pie filling in the middle. You cook it in the contraption below that is shown sitting in the fire.


Meredith had a horrible time trying to remember what to call these things. She would think and think, and then call them hand cakes. And then 2 minutes later she would call them finger pies. Finally, after the millionth time of telling her what they were called, she would remember.

Now, there is a trick to making these hand pies. For example, don't do what I did for the picture above: I let the pie maker sit in the fire while I retrieved my camera and took a few pictures. Then I tried to open it and one of the pieces of bread was stuck to the top. I do remember Kent telling me that it needs a bit more time...so I put it in the fire a little bit longer.

And what happened?


Yeah, the black thing that is on top in the picture is actually bread. Bread that is so charred that it isn't even recognizable as bread! I think I tried to make another one and it burned too. After that Kent was in charge of the hand pies!

So anyway, this post wasn't meant to be so long, but I'm sure you're wondering about the title. My kind of camping is leaving the campground at 9:30 with Jesse to go home and sleep in my own bed...all the benefits of camping without using outdoor facilities or sleeping on the cold, hard ground!
Photobucket

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know if you have tried this but we make pizzas in the pie makers. We us bread like you do for the pies. Then we put pizza sauce, cheese and whatever fixins you like. They are quite yummy. Growing up we tossed powdered sugar on the pies after they were cooked. What's a little more sugar? :o) Kids love camping so I am sure you had a good time.

Lori Wiedemann

Kim said...

Your kids will have such good memories of camping...well, maybe Jesse will if you ever let him stay in the tent! Come on, an Iowa farm girl that can't sleep in a tent! We make pizzas in our pie maker too, and also, hot ham and cheese.

Anonymous said...

We used to make those pies when I was growing up camping too. We called them fire pies. Yum-o!

Donna said...

Ok, I'm not anonymous! What is with that? It was me! Donna!