cook when you camp!

when you go camping...you can take the easy road and grill hotdogs and make lame sandwiches. OR! you can create and tasty meal that you will enjoy. we went camping this weekend in the pop-up camper. it is easier to cook in the camper because we have lots of utensils, cookware, etc. but we had a nice fire going and the blue cheese burgers were grilled to perfection. simple salad and potatoes cooked in a cast iron skillet completed the meal. or was it the bottle of red wine? really, how can you go wrong w/ blueberry pancakes for breakfast when you are camping. food can still be exciting even when you are in the wilderness.

Brussel sprouts?

i am not familiar with cooking brussel sprouts, but they have grown really well in the garden this year. cooking them with pancetta seems like the way to go. the salty pancetta will go nicely with the dark greens. i recently watched lidia (from lidia's italy) take the sprouts apart and cook them in a pan. she combined them w/ some olive oil, red pepper flakes and just covered them for a few minutes until they were tender. seems so simple. i think i will try the barefoot contessa's turkey meatloaf recipe to go along w/ it. cooking dinner for 8 people tomorrow night. i hope it works!
i also have to harvest the collard greens soon. it's time to make room for the summer garden. rumor has it that i can cook the greens and freeze them? i wonder how long they will keep?

Steak and gorgonzola

a favorite of mine is thinly sliced grilled steak on a bed of salad with crumbled gorgonzola. last night we had arugula, red onions (sliced thinly) and carrots in the salad. the dressing we had on hand was a little too heavy for the yummy crumbles, so i quickly made an olive oil/dijon/red wine vinegar dressing. nice and light.

nothing leftover to bring for lunch today. boo!

Under Construction

Finally! A food diary of my very own. I am usually really good about remembering what I ordered at a restaurant or what I made for dinner last week, but I wanted to keep track of all of these things. So why not blog about it? I hope to write down everything from what is planted in the garden, what I made for dinner the night before or even what I thought about the new restaurant I tried last week. BEWARE! Please forgive my misspelled words and poor grammar skills on future posts (i just spellchecked my post and i misspelled grammar!!). I hope to have lots of photos to accompany my rambling posts too.