Another Camping Trip

There’s nothing like sitting around the campfire while capturing your thoughts on your laptop. Camping in the 21st century is quite a bit different than it used to be. Next thing you know, not only will the State Parks provide water and electric at every capsite, they’ll add Wi-Fi as well. Things will never be the same – except that kids will still be kids. Our kids just love camping in the woods. There’s something about the freedom to explore all the God has created without any pressing timetable or agenda. Freedom to run and the freedom to sit and stare at a fire for hours is freedom for our soul.

It’s been a fun weekend. A little warmer than expected, but that’s Florida in December. While most of the country is ending their camping season, we are just starting ours. The migratory birds are taking up residence and the bugs are starting to hibernate. I can’t say we accomplished much this weekend, but that is what camping is about. We sketched the flowers and trees, dipped our fishing poles in the water and got lost in the woods. We headed straight out the back of our campsite, picked up a service road and followed the blazes on the trees for awhile. We saw a group of deers, including several fawns, and even found a baby ring neck snake. We turned around after a while, followed the blazes back to where we turn into our campsite, and it wasn’t there! We tried to find it, followed all the little foot paths, went in every possible direction, and couldn’t find it. What to do now? We hadn’t had breakfast yet, and everyone was beginning to whine, especially the adults who hadn’t had their coffee yet. We finally found another service road, and as my husband said, “If we just stay on this, it will lead us to another road, eventually.” It’s the eventually that always gets me. Eventually – that could mean minutes, or hours, or days. I wasn’t going to last very long without my cup of decaf. Luckily, it only took us a couple of minutes until we picked up the main camping loop road. Thank goodness! Within 30 minutes we back at our campsite, stuffed full of breakfast. Near tragedy was averted – thanks to a level headed husband, who got us lost in the first place, and well placed service roads.

Right now, we’re watching the turkeys come running into our campsite. We’re feeding them the leftover corn from last night’s corn on the cob. I think they rather prefer the junk food most people feed them to the corn we’re feeding them. Just like most of us, their taste buds have grown accustomed to salt, sugar and food additives. Not exactly the way God prepared it, but the way we’ve adulterated it. They’ve left our corn, looking for greener pastures. Just like us, they are ruled by their tastebuds. However, before they die of heart disease or cancer, they’ll probably end up on some hunter’s table.

Ballet-mania

Ballet, ballet, ballet! My life is lately consumed by ballet! My daughter’s ballet, of course. Not mine. Three hour practices twice a week can drive anyone crazy. But she loves it, so we sacrifice. We gladly, on most days, give her our time and energy. Why? We do it so that she can twirl and leap and move about in graceful defiance of gravity and all that holds the rest of us firmly planted on the ground. The smile on her face, the bounce in her step and the joy she exhibits are things we wouldn’t trade for anything, even though it does make our days a little crazy lately. I’m getting a new appreciation for “fast food”. For us, fast food means a full meal of healthy food on the table in about 30 minutes. It means that I make sure we have a well stocked freezer full of veggies and meals I’ve cooked before. It means planning ahead, but being flexible enough to change our plans. It means serving a less traditional meal than most Americans do. Last night we had sweet potatoes, speckled butter beans, swiss chard and fresh whole wheat flax bread. Everyone was delightfully “stuffed” and quickly satisfied. How did we do all this so fast? Well, I have two “secrets” which I love to tell people about.

My first “secret” is always making more than you can possibly eat at one meal. Leftovers are a busy family’s best friend. Frozen, they last for months. Unfrozen, they make a great start for another recipe. Three nights previous, we had regular sweet potatoes baked in the oven. I just cooked twice as many as we would eat. That night, I scooped them out of their skin so that last night, I could use them for sweet potato casserole. We do lots of things that way. Mashed potatoes one night make a great topping for shepherd’s pie another night. Leftover rice becomes fried rice later in the week, or stuffing for a pepper.

My second “secret” is my pressure cooker. Oh, I just couldn’t possibly live without it. Pressure cookers are the fodder of lots old tales about exploding dinners in the kitchen. Created early in the 1900s, pressure cookers simply have locking lids which allow the steam from cooking to buildup pressure, which greatly decreases the amount of time it takes to cook foods. Pressure cookers make short work of all kinds of vegetables, beans and especially soups. Modern pressure cookers, unlike their ancient counterparts, are built with several safety valves and pressure locks which make them safe and easy. The only challenge I have found with using a pressure cooker is that it can cook vegetables so fast that I need to keep a careful eye on the clock. For instance, broccoli cooks within a minute and cauliflower within 2 minutes. So, timing is important, but even if the veggies get a little overcooked they can easily be salvaged by mashing with spices and/or a bit of cheese and bread crumbs. We love having fresh collards, which some people cook for hours with salt pork. We can cook collard greens in less than 5 minutes with a nice vegetable broth and seasoning.

So, ballet is still stressing our schedule, but with a little planning and preparation, we can still find lots of ways to create wonderfully tasty and health meals quickly.