W histle the tune to the Beattle’s song Yellow Submarine here . . .
We were off paddling by 8:30 am on smooth water.
In July we went canoeing for a week with my husbands family at Ross Lake National Recreation Area in Washington. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “I need a vacation from my vacation” and in our case it is true. But perhaps for different reasons than what you would think, its mostly because we had such a great time that we weren’t really ready for it to be over.
The kids named all the canoes. This was the yellow "racer", because it was the fastest. The water is glacial green!
Seven adults, four canoes, one kayak, piles of gear, buckets of food, the kitchen sink, four kiddos, two teenagers, and more buckets of food all piled in: rowed, setup camp, cooked, packed up, rowed, setup camp, cooked, etc. Preparing and packing for a trip like this takes many hours of planing, packing, unpacking, thinning, planning re-packing etc. Yet despite all this work both before and during we had a blast, which I give credit to the beautiful scenery, fresh air, and a great family.
A one kid per boat rule, eased the sibling arguments.
A good portion of this planning was about food, which is as it should be. Practicality aside, one particular form of sustenance that I gave a lot of thought to was COOKIES. Ask me to go a week without a shower covered in sunscreen and bug spray, wearing no deodorant so as to not attract bears, and I will agree. But ask me to go a week without a cookies and you will meet will some very powerful resistance, anchored in butter and sugar. Thanks to my father in law Ned introducing me to the fine art of dutch oven cooking we did not forgo the pleasure of an afternoon cookie and tea.
The ideal type of dutch oven.
It turns out my dutch oven is not the right type for campfire cooking. You should have the type with legs for holding the pot over the coals and and rimmed lid for holding the coals on the lid. Ned, had a small version of this. We made mine work well enough by filling a cast iron frying pan with coals and placing the dutch oven on top of it then inverting the lid on top to hold the coals. I now have a dutch oven like this one my to look for at garage sales or thrift shops.
Making my dutch oven work, there are hot coals in the frying pan and on top of the inverted lid.
I’m going to work on recipes for food to take next year, but the cookie recipe was just fine. I will share it below so perhaps you can have some comfort from home on your next outdoor adventure.
Yum Yum
Whole Grain Baking Mix
(Both recipes below are slightly modified from Making and Using Dried Foods by Phyllis Hobson)
3 c whole wheat pastry flour
3 c white flour
1 c spelt
4 c oats
2 c dried milk
1 tbs salt
1 1/2 c coconut oil
Blend the dry ingredients. Cut in the oil until mixture resembles smallish crumbs.
Once, I had the dry mix ready I split it out into separate ziploc baggies for the different items I was planning on making with it.
Oatmeal, Chocolate Chip and Raisin Campfire Cookies
2 c whole grain baking mix from above
1 tablespoon dried egg powder
2/3 c brown sugar
1 c chocolate chips
1 c raisins or dried cranberry’s
Add water directly to the baggie and stir until batter resembles cookie dough. Once the Dutch oven is preheated start spooning the cookies in. Because some of the coals cooled down each batch was unique in the cooking time required. You will have to refresh the coals to keep the temperature up as you do multiple batches. I can’t say how many we made because they pretty much got devoured as soon as they were cooled enough to hold.
Cookie Monster!
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