Zucchini Relish

We tried this at friends' house a few years ago and fell in love with this Zucchini Relish.  It has a bit of a different taste than your typical pickle relish.  Burgers, brats, dogs - all go hand-in-hand with camping.  Why not dress it up a bit differently?

Ingredients

• 10 cups ground or shredded zucchini
  
• 4 cups ground or shredded white onions
• 5 Tbs salt
• 2 1/4 cups white vinegar
• 4 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp dry mustard
• 1 tsp tumeric
• 1 tsp corn starch
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 2 tsp celery salt
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 1 red bell pepper, diced

How to make it:

• Mix zucchini, onions, and salt.  Allow to stand overnight.  Drain and rinse with cold water.
• Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil
• Simmer uncovered for 30 minutes
• Pour into hot, sterilized jars, apply 2 piece lid.
• Process 5 minutes in hot water bath.

Camping season is canning season

The delights of the camping season means that our garden and the farmer's market are full of bounty.  As I was packing some more food into the camper this afternoon, I inevitably grabbed a fair number of home canned goods.  Many of our favorites are perfect for the camping trip.  I thought I'd share some of my recipes here.

The beauty of home canned goods is that they are shelf stable until they're opened, you just want to keep them in a cooler location for storage.  Our basement is where most my hard work is stored.  When I take home canned goods on camping trips, we don't typically get too hot that I'm concerned about the food spoiling.  That's the beauty of the air conditioner on the camper.  Once a jar is opened, it stays in the fridge until it's empty.

I will add a number of recipes, each as their own post, and include a list for easier searching.

• Bread & Butter Pickles
• Dill pickles
• Peaches
• Salsa
• Strawberry Jam
• Zucchini Relish

Mosquito challenge

As I went for my run this morning, I was struck by the gorgeous, warm weather.  It was about 60 degrees

Running through the woods

while I was out and not quite sunny.  Basically, it was the perfect running weather.  You're probably wondering why I'm writing about the perfect running weather when this is a camping blog.  Well, because perfect running weather also makes for great camping weather.

Yesterday, a friend shared a BuzzFeed post with me about camping.  A lot of times these types of posts are more geared toward a less experienced camper, or the type of camper that backpacks for weeks at a time.  This post left me pleasantly surprised.  There were some good ideas that I want to try (adds duck tape to shopping list).

This list gave a couple of ideas for beating mosquitoes.  Mosquitoes love, LOVE me.  When we go to Sleepy Hollow State Park, I come home just covered in bites.  This list suggests sage in the campfire or Johnson's Baby Creamy Oil.  I've tried numerous products over the years, Deep Woods Off being my go-to.  What do you think is the best way to beat mosquitoes?

I challenge you to tell me your best mosquito repellent.  Tell me something new and I'll try it and blog about my experience.

Stocking the pantry

I went grocery shopping earlier this week.  I got a lot of the pantry items we'll use throughout the camping season.  Obviously, they'll get replenished throughout the season, but that first shopping trip is a big one.  I tried to partner it with a lower than normal regular shopping trip so that the total cost wasn't quite as shocking.

I'm a big fan of individual servings for food items that stay in the camper.  The food doesn't go stale between trips.  We can get a greater variety of snacks, depending on how I buy them.  My kids love that I'm more likely to buy junk food for camping trips than I am for our house.  Hey, baked potato chips can reduce a teensy bit of guilt, right?

There are definitely items that can't be purchased in individual servings, like graham crackers for s'mores.  For those items, I'll seal them in a ziplock bag and put the ziplock bag back into the box the product came in.  For this reason, I try to have a healthy stock of gallon and quart size ziplocks.

Our camper came with a microwave.  It's a pretty standard item nowadays.  I'm not one to think of microwaving while camping, but it's there.  It's not uncommon for us to go exploring on a hike or going on a bike ride or something else and we get back at lunch time and the kids are "just starving!" (their words, not mine).  Their lunch choices usually include PB&J or Easy Mac (What is that mysterious white powder? Maybe I don't want to know...).  Hello microwave.  Other than that, the microwave is often where I put the fruit while we're traveling because it's not going to get too bounced around.

For breakfast, we'll sometimes have pancakes.  The Meijer brand box of pancake mix only requires water to mix and we can make as much or as little as we want.  I've tried the bottles of mix where you add water and shake, but feel constrained in how many pancakes we make.  National brand box pancake mix requires oil.  I just prefer the simplicity of adding water and mixing.  And yes, my whole food loving friends, I know I can make my own pancakes from scratch, but again, I like the simplicity in this process.

Of course, I'll continue adding more food items before our first trip in 2 weeks.  I enjoy canning the bounty of our garden in the summer and I'll be adding numerous jars for our enjoyment on camping trips.  The week of our trip I'll buy the perishable food.

I know you're wondering, I put the bread in the oven and that's where it stays for the whole trip because I just don't bake while camping.

Hearty Breakfast Bake

This meal is a big hit with our family and friends.  Every breakfast food that you love is included.  Eggs - check.  Hash browns - check.  Sausage - check.  Even better, you dump it into your dutch oven and just let it cook on the coals of your fire.

The downside is that you have to get a fire going and then get the coals hot enough to cook, and then it needs to cook a while.  Basically, you have to plan your breakfast ahead of time or have something for the kids to tide them over until breakfast is ready.  I usually have some zucchini bread hanging around for just this reason.

A tip, get yourself some parchment liners for your dutch oven, like these.  You'll be happy you did when it's time to clean up.

Hearty Breakfast Bake

• 12 oz. bulk pork sausage, browned
  
• ½ c. chopped red onion
• ½ c. chopped red bell pepper
• 2 4-oz. cans sliced mushrooms, drained
• 2 ½ c. frozen hash brown potatoes, thawed
• 8 oz. Swiss cheese, sliced and shredded

Layer into Dutch oven and poor the following mixture over:

• 1 c. Bisquick
• 2 c. milk
• 5 eggs, scrambled
• Pepper to taste

Bake at 400 for 30-40 minutes or til knife comes out clean.

Getting ready for the new camping season

The kids have been on spring break.  Our first trip is only a few weeks away.  Once school starts back up tomorrow, we'll be busy, busy, busy.  My opportunities to get ready for the camping season will be minimal.  I took advantage of the lack of schedule and beautiful weather to start my end of the camping prep.

I started by doing my scrub down.  I get a rag and my bucket of vinegar and water, and I scrub and scrub. Believe me, I'm not exactly the poster child for green living, but I like that the vinegar and water at least reduces some of the chemicals in our lives.  And bleach does serve a purpose (looking at you, Toilet).  Anyway, I sweep the floors and then scrub them.  I bring the vacuum from the house out to the camper and I vacuum all the upholstery and the nooks and crannies.  The camper will not be this clean all at once again until next spring.

5 Months Ago Me made it easy on Today Me

Husband does his thing with getting the camper ready.  He deals with the de-winterizing, and the roof cleaning and sealing, and the more mechanical-y stuff.  This system works for us.

In the fall, I was smart.  I made a pen and paper list of every item I took out of the camper for the winter.  The list stayed on the camper counter all winter long (let's face it, I'd put it some place genius for safe-keeping and then forget that genius location 5 months later).  My attempts at remembering are now easy.  My shopping list is practically ready to go, I know exactly what we need.

Now, I just need to go shopping for our pantry staples and things that needed replacing.  This is a bigger trip and will happen when the kids are back in school now that spring break is ending.

Is it camping season yet?