Rhubarb Custard Pie

Prepping for Thanksgiving tomorrow, I just pulled my pie out of the oven.  Kids are loving the smell of the house.  A while back, I said I'd have to share my recipe for Rhubarb Custard Pie (here's my recipe for Rhubarb Cake).  It's a favorite in this family.  We have abundant rhubarb that grows in the garden every summer.  So abundant that I'll happily give it away to those that ask.  Or don't ask, I'll push it on people.  I'm a rhubarb pusher.  Or something.

Anyway...

The sugar in the custard filling cuts the bitterness of the rhubarb.  I am not a fan of straight rhubarb, but love this pie.  I freeze rhubarb in the warmer months in quantities for making pies.  I have definitely taken pie on camping trips, too.  My MIL gave me her recipe and now I share it with you.

What you need:

Pie Filling:

• 4 cups chopped rhubarb
• 3 eggs
• 3 Tbsp milk
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup flour
• 3/4 tsp nutmeg

Pie Crust:

• Haha!!  I just use the refrigerated Pillsbury crust!  I used to make my own with Crisco, but I'm good with the stuff from the store.

What to do:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  In a mixing bowl, stir together the eggs, milk, sugar, flour, and nutmeg.  Add the rhubarb and mix together.  Take a refrigerated pie crust and line your pie pan.  Pour rhubarb filling into the lined pie pan.  Take 2nd pie crust and cut into 3/4" strips.  Lay strips similarly spaced on your filled pie crust in one direction, then lay the remaining strips in a perpendicular direction.  Fold lower crust over the pastry strips and press firmly to seal.  You will want to put some foil over the edge of your crust to prevent burning.  Bake pie at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, then lower the oven temp to 375 degrees and bake for an additional 40 minutes.

Time to think about Memorial weekend!

The brown November that I wrote about turned into a white November.  It's been cold and snowy here in Michigan.  Winter came early.  Oldest kid has suggested that we get the Christmas decorations out and put away the Thanksgiving and fall decor.  I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel yet. I'll wait a few more days, until after we eat our turkey and mashed potatoes.

What better way is there to spend a snowy Saturday morning than by planning a camping trip?

This year, I promised myself to remember to book Memorial weekend 6 months out.  Usually, I don't think about it until sometime in January and I'm left searching for the best of the left over sites across multiple campgrounds.  I smartened up this year, I put a reminder on my calendar on the date 6 months before Memorial weekend starts, which is today!  Husband and I discussed where we wanted to go beforehand and we had 98% of the campground to choose from when I booked at 7 am this morning (my kids' early-bird tendencies do have some benefits).

So, be a cool camper like me, and book your Memorial trip.

Is it camping season yet?

Day trip to Bronners

Only 49 days until Christmas!! (Ok, I only know because of that sign in Bronners, I don't actually keep count)

Considering my love of lists, surely you know I'm already preparing for Christmas right?  Yes, it's November 6.  I know that.

My kids had school off today for Parent Teacher Conferences.  I work as a substitute teacher at their school, which means we had a free day today.  It occurred to me that we hadn't been to Bronners Christmas Wonderland in a couple years.  I suggested it to the kids this morning and off we went.

Bronners is located in Frankenmuth, Michigan.  It takes a bit over an hour to get there from our house.  A nice day trip ensuring we could get back in time for dinner and Oldest Kid's gymnastics class.  Frankenmuth is a fun town, well known for it's chicken dinners, shopping, and Bronners.  Today, we just stuck to Bronners for time consideration.

You're wondering where the connection to camping is.  I get it.  It's coming.

The world's largest Christmas store is, well, enormous.  According to the trivia card in the Season's Eatings snack shop, the store area for customers is 1.7 acres (7 acres total).  Ornaments are grouped by color, type of food, activity, occupation, animal type, character type, vacation location, life stage, hobby, sport, religion.  You name it, they've got it.  Then there's the area dedicated to trees, nativities, candy, lights, outdoor displays, kids, breakables (well, more breakable than normal ornaments).

They even have a section for camping!  (See, I told you it was coming!).  Santa in a camper.  A 5th wheel, a travel trailer, a pop-up, a tent.  S'mores.  S'mores doing things.  Actually, there were lots of s'mores ornaments all over the store to coincide with the theme of the display was.  I quite liked the marshmallow guy fishing in a graham cracker boat, sitting on chocolate.  Anyway, camping.  We already have several camping ornaments.  We found a marshmallow on a stick early in our shopping excursion, so we picked that up.

More info for camping, there is a private campground only a couple of miles from Bronners.  My parents have stayed there, but I don't know enough information to speak about it.

Depending on your proximity, Bronners and Frankenmuth is a good day trip or weekend trip any time of the year.  And you'll see a McDonalds made to look like an old German building.

Some of the ornaments we came home with

It's November

It's November.  I've been pretty quiet on the blog lately.  This thing called work kept me pretty busy.  Funny how that is.

The camping season is done.  Halloween has passed.  We're hitting the dreary days of brown November.  The colorful leaves are past their peak, what is on the ground are brown leaves.  What are in the trees are brown leaves.  Brown.

Halloween in our area brought snow.  Too early in my opinion.  Of course, I don't get a say.  My kids had winter coats on over their costumes.  I had my winter coat, gloves and my hood on.  I was thankful that my church had an indoor Trunk-or-Treat for the latter part of our evening.  And judging from the record breaking attendance, so were others.

I enjoy fall, I love the colorful leaves.  Halloween is fun for me, even as an adult.  I love apple cider and carving pumpkins.  I don't enjoy the dreaded winter to come, and fall means that to me.

The camper is winterized.  A depressing day, to say the least.  My lists are made for the day I get back into the camper in the spring to restock for Camping Season 2015.  They are sitting on the counter in the camper, waiting for their shining moment, unable to be lost in the months before then (let's face it, they'd get lost in the house).

While the weather is still mostly ok, I've been trying to get my running groove back, extending my distance back to where it was.  At least on my days off.  And maybe clean my house.  Maybe.

I'll share a picture a took from the park down the street that I took last week.  The brilliant yellow of the leaves on the trail made the forest look as if it was glowing.  Running in the glow, how can you not feel rejuvenated in life?

Card Games & Such

I posted about the Board Games in our camper the other day, and our Outdoor Games a while back.  Clearly, I love games.

We have a regular deck of cards in the camper, but I don't think the cellophane is off of it yet.  We could easily play Crazy 8s or Go Fish or whatever.  But Uno, it's a favorite for our family.  Simple, fun.  A way to play and connect with each other.  When we went camping with my in-laws this year, my father-in-law shared that he'd never played the game.  #1 - I was shocked, who hasn't played Uno?  #2 - They went and bought a deck shortly after the trip to play with my nieces visiting from Florida.

Youngest Kid isn't quite there with Phase 10, though she wants to be.  You try to beat your competitors through 10 different phases of card combinations.  It's a longer game, we've been known to pause a game on our score sheet and finish on another day.

Spot It was a gift from those nieces in Florida.  It's a faster paced game, everyone tries to find a match on the same card.  Fun.

I saw the Little Hands Card Holder at Walmart a while back.  Genius.  Little hands need to hold a lot of cards, this helps them out.  Certainly the 10-11 cards in Phase 10 fit in this nicely.  Also if someone gets zinged a lot in Uno.  These were such a hit that we have 2 in the camper and 2 in the house.

I have some more games that I'll post about another day, good travel sized games. Maybe later on, I'll share games that didn't make it into the camper this year (mental note...).  If I remember.

Board Games

I love to play games, always have.  I have fond memories of playing Risk in our pop-up as a kid with my family.  My kids enjoy games, too, and I love that my kids are old enough to play games beyond Candyland.  I certainly enjoyed Candyland when they were 3, but I'm glad to have moved it to the basement.

As I have started clearing things out of the camper for the winter, the games come into the house and join our other games.  Inevitably, we'll want to play them some time during our snowy months.

Cribbage is mostly for Husband and I to play on rainy nights after the kids are in bed.  We have played it with the kids, but they still need lots of help.  It's a card game with a board for keeping score.

Pentago was a new addition to our collection this year.  It's a 2 player game where you try to get 5 marbles in a row.  Think of Connect 4 or Tic Tac Toe with a literal twist in the game, as you twist a quadrant of the board at the end of your turn.  It's simple and fun, deserving the awards it's received in my opinion.

We have the kids version of Sequence, but it's nice to have moved up to the full version of Sequence.  You use playing cards to attempt to get 5 in a row on the board or to block other players.

My kids love Clue.  We just happen to have The Simpsons version.  Youngest Kid still needs a bit of help, but we have fun playing it.  And when the game is done, the kids will just play with the figurines and make whole story lines.

Sorry, a classic.  Always fun to bump another player back to their Start.

We also have Monopoly in the camper.  I got two games of Monopoly when my uncle died, not sure why.  One board just stays in the camper.  I've thought about getting a new one that has electronic banking so that money can't fly away in the breeze while on a camping trip.  But when we already have two boards, it's hard to justify paying for a 3rd.

The games have moved inside.  Come spring, I'll have the kids help pick out the board games for Camping Season 2015.  I'm always a bit surprised by what they pick.

Here are my posts about Card Games and Outdoor Games

My dog loves camping, too!

Oscar the dog, he knows when we're getting ready for a camping trip.  He's been known to take a quick, unexpected jump into the truck an hour before we roll out and refuse to get out.

Why are you taking my picture??

I have a few friends that don't take their dog camping, mostly because the dog barks too much.  Oscar rarely barks.  Oh, he makes noises to let you know his feelings about things, but he rarely barks.  He also makes a fun old-man coughing noise that's just delightful at 5 am in the camper - old dogs are fun!

Of course, we keep him comfortable while we camp.  He's got a bed in the camper, just like he does at home.  Oscar, he's funny, he loves to be covered up with a blanket.  He'll bring you his blanket so you can cover him up.  Then, I'll hold the blanket up over his bed, he'll walk around on his bed in circles to find just the right way to lay down, and drags his head under the blanket as I start to cover him.  Dog likes to be cozy.  So, he's got a blanket in the camper, too.  He sleeps on the floor on Husband's side of the bed.

For outside, we have a corkscrew tie-out.  We used to have a fancy self-retracting tie out, but it died last winter and we haven't found a replacement in our price range.

Our main leash (we have a back up in the camper, just in case) is a 4 foot long leash.  I like the 4' length, it's easy to get him immediately right next to me for any reason.  Attached to the leash is a container holding poo bags.  Whenever takes a dump, the bags are right there for easy clean-up.  There may have been some teasing about the pink and purple poo bags for our male dog, but, hey, they were cheaper than all blue.

Manly dogs use pink poo bags

For food, I keep it in a Rubbermaid container.  There was this one trip a couple years ago where Oscar's food was left outside right next to his food dish.  And, the food had all sorts of mold by Sunday morning because of the sun and lack of ventilation.  That mistake has not been repeated.

While we're on our camping trip, Oscar stays outside.  He goes on walks with us, hikes with us.  He's on his tie-out while we're playing outside games and games on the picnic table.  He's right there at the campfire when we're talking at night.  He still goes with me on my runs like he does when we're at home.  When we get home, he's exhausted from the extra activity and sleeps more than normal the next day.

Oscar is just like the rest of my family, he loves camping.