Camping and Dutch oven cooking go well together and it seems to me that one always makes the other all the better. Recently we spent the weekend at Fairfield Lake State Park, one of our favorites, to camp and present a Dutch oven cooking demonstration. The demo was Saturday afternoon and so the order of the day was preparation of food items during the post breakfast mid-afternoon time frame. We fixed a pot of beans, a couple of batches of cornbread, and a peach cobbler dessert for the 2:00 event. By the time we were done with the demo, we were ready to clean the pots, pack up, grab something…
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Demos & Classes, and Coaching, Oh my! (Much less scary than Lions & Tigers and Bears.)
I recall when I first started cooking with a dutch oven, there were lots of stews and more than a few burned cookies or biscuits. There were meals that have multiple parts, some of which were still on the fire and others had already cooled down and needed to be reheated. There were times I had so much charcoal leftover it could be used to start three or four campfires and other times that I had to relight coals in the middle just to get the meal done. Now this is not a complicated form of cooking, but there is definitely a learning curve. Over the years I’ve had the…
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Stuffed Rice Ring
The first thing that pops into my mind when I think of Dutch oven cooking is a camping trip and campfire cooking. Camping meal ideas from past memories used to be primarily burgers, hot dogs or steaks, a pot of beans and maybe some foil wrapped potatoes baking in the campfire. Other campfire memories of meals include stone soup, chili, and stew. There’s no question that a Dutch oven works great for many of the above. When we limit ourselves to those choices though, we are missing out on some real flavor treats. When we think of it as more than a pot, but actually an oven, we open a…
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“Breakfast, it’s the most important meal of the morning!”
Growing up, we always heard about how breakfast was the most important meal of the day and so often we would hear about the importance of a big hearty breakfast. Sometimes when I joke around, I refer to breakfast as the most important meal of the morning. Mom always made sure we had something on our plates before we headed off to school in the mornings. A favorite of mine as I recall was cheese toast, which was nothing more than an open-faced grilled cheese sandwich. After moving out of the house and being responsible for my own breakfast, things changed. The reality in my world today is that breakfast…
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Chile, chilli, or chili?
Do you want to start an argument about chili? Is it “chili”, “chile”, or “chilli”? Are we talking about a country, a type of pepper, a seasoning, or a dish? There’s all kinds of camps that will jump at the chance to argue about chile, chilli or chili. I’m not talking about the South American country, that’s a whole other definition and word origin. When we’re on food, first there’s a question about the proper spelling of the word and whether it relates to a meaty, delicious, sometimes burn your mouth, food item also called chili con carne by some. Or, are we talking about the pepper or a particular…
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Onion Soup and Dutch Oven Roasted Veggies
I remember my mom cooking potatoes by mixing them with Lipton’s dehydrated French onion soup mix with some oil and then oven roasting them. It was simple and it was delicious. Over the past few years, our family has examined our eating habits and found that it had some room for improvement. We don’t always eat in a healthy manner and sometimes a kick-start in eating discipline is something we find helpful. To that end, every so often, we will make use of the concepts placed forward by the Whole30 folks. Doing so, we restrict our diet from some things which may not be bad but could cause inflammation as…
