Stone Ground Cornmeal Scones

Oooo… a light cornmeal flavor with a delightful cornmeal “crunch” in every bite! These scones are perfect for breakfast, dinner, or snack!

Scones are traditionally baked in the oven but if you’re tent/car camping or have a small RV without an oven like I do, just cook them in the skillet! You’ll need a skillet with a lid, and you’ll want to peek at them frequently to watch how brown they’re getting but you’ll love serving these crunchy little guys on your next adventure! They’re quick and easy - and you can prepare the dry ingredients at home! Just pack up the mix in a zipper bag, label it with a note about how much milk to add, and you’ll be all set!

Give these scones a try and let us know how you liked them!

Orange Marmalade Pressure Cooker Cake

OK - to be honest, I didn’t have very high expectations for this cake. I expected something looking kind of funky so you can imagine my surprise and delight when I removed the foil covering the cake pan - and there was a beautiful little cake, perfectly cooked! This recipe makes a small cake, perfect for four people. The texture is moist and rich - not at all gooey. Serve it with whip cream and it is absolutely heavenly! Oh yes! - I’ll definitely be making this on our next camping trip!

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Mom's Favorite Pinto Beans

Oh my gosh….these beans are so delicious! And they’re super easy and quick to make in a pressure cooker!

I love my stovetop pressure cooker for making camp cooking quick and easy. It’s perfect for boondocking too because it doesn’t need electricity. I can use it for anything I use the Instant Pot for at home like stew, pulled chicken, beans, rice, quick breads, etc. I can cook with it outside on the camp stove or on the stove in the Casita. The pressure cooker makes quick work of hearty, healthy camping meals and because it cooks quickly, it helps conserve fuel! Not only that, but I can use it for regular cooking too so it doubles as a soup pot! Woo hoo!

Of course, you could bring your Instant Pot if you were planning on having hookups, or if you planned to use a generator, or you had some beefy solar going on!

I hope you try these pinto beans on your next adventure! Let me know how you liked them!

Oh, and if there were any left over, you could use them for burritos the next day!

Equipment:

• Pressure cooker or Instant Pot

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Pantry Sour Cream

Sour cream is so good with so many things but I often forgo adding it to my camper packing list due to limited refrigerator/cooler space. No longer! This recipe allows me to make sour cream whenever I want! Woo hoo!

Ingredients:

• 1 can media crema

• 1 teaspoon white vinegar

Instructions:

1. Mix the media crema and vinegar together in a container with lid.

2. Let sit for about an hour.

3. Refrigerate.

Notes:

• Add another teaspoon of vinegar for a thicker sour cream.

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Tortilla Soup

This tomato-based soup is easy and delicious!

Recipes based on tomatoes

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Did you make this recipe? Let us know how you liked it in the comment section below!

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Lentil Stew

Simple, hearty, full of veggies…one of our favorites!

This versatile one pot meal is easy to change up - depending on what veggies you toss in and what seasonings you like! Sprinkle in taco seasoning for a Tex-Mex flavor, or maybe some curry powder, you could even throw in some cheese of choice! It’s up to you!

Did you make this recipe? Let us know how it worked for you in the comments below.

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Creamy Tomato Pasta

This one pot meal comes together quick for a creamy treat! Add your choice of meat: cubed chicken, meat balls, Italian sausage, etc. I like to prepare meats ahead of time so I’m not cooking them in the Casita. I just cook the meat at home, let cool then place in zipper bags and freeze flat. I plan meals around 1/2 lb of meat per recipe so I divide the cooked meat and package in small bags.

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I hope you try out this simple meal! Let us know how it worked out in the comments below!

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Stovetop Biscuits

Quick and delicious, you can whip up a batch of these hot, tender packets of deliciousness in no time - no oven needed! Serve them with breakfast or pair them with a great soup or stew - you just can’t go wrong with this quick bread! (Oh, and don’t tell anyone, but you can add all kinds of flavors to complement what you are serving them with!)

At home, I make a big batch of these favorites in my 12” cast iron skillet, baking them at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. While camping in the Casita, I make a half batch (recipe below) for just the two of us in my 10” skillet on the stovetop. I have made them in my small Dutch oven, using coals on top and bottom and, as satisfying as I find this method, it is much too time-consuming. I find the stovetop method to be so quick and straightforward that I’ll whip up a batch even at home sometimes!

When I make a regular batch of biscuits at home, I almost always pat the dough out and use a biscuit cutter to cut the dough. A straight down cut without twisting will ensure a perfectly risen biscuit. But when camping, I prefer not to spread flour around and make a mess, so I just shape them by hand. They may not rise quite the same, but they definitely taste the same!

Be sure to add Stovetop Biscuits to your camping food meal plan!

And….let us know how you liked them!

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The Maiden Voyage of Do-Si-Do

It was our first adventure with our new to us 2012 Casita travel trailer we call Do-Si-Do. We had already taken it out for a couple of test-tows, but this was the real thing - at freeway speeds and going up and down hills to the Oregon coast!

Sometimes you just close your eyes and jump. At this moment, as we pulled out of the driveway at 8:00 am, it felt like we were jumping alright - but our eyes were wide open with, shall we say “a slight case of angst” while we white-knuckled ourselves into the unknown! We had some work done on the old Nissan Quest to make it more worthy of the title “Tow Vehicle” but we could only hope and pray that the old minivan would consent to pulling our new toy to the shore - and back!

As we inched down the driveway early that Saturday, we were immediately confronted with the horrific sound of the hitch scraping on the steep driveway, surely waking the neighbors (they were probably laughing at us). We used some boards under the van’s back tires to even out the opposing angles of driveway and street and eventually creeped out without further commotion.

How are the brakes? Did you latch all the cabinet doors? Are the vent hatches down? You hooked up the emergency brake cable, right? Did you lock the door? What about the anti-sway bar? Are the chains crisscrossed? By time we exhausted all our nervous questioning of each other, we were on the freeway!

OK - Do-Si-Do is towing fine. We are on the way! As I’m looking into passenger side rearview mirror, watching the cute little fiberglass orb being pulled merrily behind us, I start to smile with happy excitement - until I notice that we left the step down! Bill took the first exit and pulled into a parking lot. I jumped out to raise the step and take another look around the camper, then jumped back in - and we were off! Except we were confronted by another sharp driveway/street convergence just waiting to expose our newbie-ness! Bill hesitated, I said “just go!” and off we went with a little scrape and a quick getaway!

Traffic through Seattle was light and we cruised by Tacoma, around Olympia, and west toward the coast then south on Highway 101. It was a familiar route, we had driven it many times - get up in the morning, fill the tank, and arrive at the shore around noon. As you head west then south from Olympia the road winds through farmland and along marshlands dotted with tiny oyster villages. It’s very scenic… At Montesano we had a navigation glitch and had to make a few turns to get back to our route. It was a quick fix and we were soon puttering through Raymond, past the “metal people” sculptures that inspired some serious barking by Poppy! “How are we doing with gas?” “We have half a tank - we should probably stop and fill up at the next station…” As we bobbed along the road, enjoying the scenery, we realized that the gas gage was going down very quickly and we hadn’t seen anything resembling a gas station since Raymond - and the prospects of finding one before Astoria weren’t promising, especially since I didn’t have cell service out there and couldn’t search for the inconspicuous station 1/2 mile off our route. At this point, navigation said 34 miles to Astoria. The dashboard calculator said 42 miles till empty - that’s cutting it a little close we thought! As we made the curve to parallel the bank of the great Columbia River, navigation said 9 miles to Astoria, but the gas calculator said 10 miles till empty! What? The gas-use calculations were changing, and not in our favor! We looked at each other with wide eyes - the angst was back - because before you get to Astoria, you have to climb the impressive Astoria-Megler Bridge.

As we made our way onto the bridge deck, the dashboard said 4 miles till empty. The bridge is 4.1 miles long, has one lane of traffic in each direction and doesn’t have shoulders…. We crossed the flat part of the bridge and stared ahead, in terror, at the portion of the span that rises 200 feet above the Columbia River (that’s so high huge container ships pass under on their way to Portland). If we could make it to the crown of the bridge we could coast down to the nearest gas station - if we didn’t… it was really too much to think about! As we climbed the imposing slope the dashboard reported 0 miles till empty. Our hearts racing, we kept climbing, each of us holding our breath like balloons trying to lighten the load! Up, up, up…

Would we make it? Or, would we be featured on the evening news?