July...gone in a flash!

Ohmygoodness people! It is August FIRST! What happened to July?

I promised a recap of what we had been up to and never got around to it, so now I'm just going to hit the highlights of July in general.

I already talked about the fourth of July and how I'm not really into it. Chris and I stayed home and went to bed early (we are party animals!).

The next week was pretty busy as we had a houseguest for the first half of the week, and we were getting ready to be out of town the following weekend, on top of school, internships, work...never a dull moment around here!

The big adventure for July was our annual boating and camping trip with our friends. This year, as two years ago, we headed to Lake Billy Chinook. LBC is NW of Redmond, Oregon. It is a huge, beautiful lake that is fed by something like five different tributaries. It is in a deep canyon.

We headed out Friday morning, and were on the lake by about 1 in the afternoon! The weather was spectacular! HOT and SUNNY!

 Roadtrip!

On the lake!

We stayed at a campground a few miles from the lake. It is a very nice place and we had an incredible view from our campsite.

I didn't take too many pictures this year. I was too busy enjoying myself. Some highlights of the trip: Saturday afternoon a crazy lightning-thunder-rain storm billowed up and stormed. It was really awesome and spectacular. We were all huddling in our vehicles. Good camping memories!

Sunday the wind was blowing like crazy on the lake so we only stayed out about half the day. Back at the campground the guys, and our friends' daughter Mckenna, decided to play a round of shuffleboard.

 Uhm. HILARIOUS. There was much "discussion" about the rules, how to play and score. Soooo funny! The ladies sat back, listened and laughed.

Monday was time to head back home. It was a long weekend, as usual, but wonderful. We met some new friends, spent time with "old" friends, and enjoyed the beauty of Oregon.

Tuesday night we had tickets to see Foreigner in concert. Yes they are still around and they did an amazing job! Plus, the people watching was EPIC!

The following weeked we realized that it was garden harvesting time, at least for a few things, like pickles and beans. So we worked in the garden and then did some canning. 

We also had a new kitty visitor...I've only seen him the one time but he stopped long enough to get a couple pets.

Okay! I think that catches us up on the July main events! Today is August and we have a VERY busy 5 or 6 weeks ahead of us with multiple house guests, internship, the end of summer session, my week long post-session, work, the garden and trying to get as much play time in as possible before the weather starts to cool off.

Stay tuned!



Lake Merwin August 2011

When Chris and I lived in Portland, Lake Merwin was our favorite place to take our boat. Lake Merwin is about an hour and 40 minutes North-East of our old house in Tigard. It is actually a big reservoir at the base of Mount St. Helens.

We liked to go to Merwin because it was much larger than any of our other local options. There isn't much in the way of lakes in the Portland area, a fact my friend Kimberly, from Michigan, was quite astounded by! Mostly there are rivers, and lots of them!

The problem for us with rivers is that they are typically somewhat narrow. We have a jet boat and it doesn't handle all the wake and waves that great, so when we are in a narrow river filled with super-wake producing wake board boats...well, we just aren't having that great of a time.

So, we liked Merwin for the fact that it was big and open and we could usually find a place to get away from all the wake boats.

A few years ago we introduced some of our Portland boating friends to Merwin and it was a hit with them as well. Just before Chris and I moved to S. Ore we had a last hurrah of summer, and went up to Merwin with our friends. It was a great trip and our last time at Merwin. Last year, the same group of friends decided to make it a little longer trip and we all headed over to Lake Billy Chinook in Eastern Oregon for a weekend of camping and boating. It was spectacular.

This year we decided to do our camping and boating weekend back at Merwin! Fun! Nostalgia! But a long ass drive for us...over 7 hours towing. Sheesh! It ended up that I towed the boat the first leg of our trip, just over 100 miles, due to Chris' work schedule getting all messed up. That was a first for me...I was totally alone, hauling the boat for the first time on the freeway! EEk! Scary, but I did it! So empowering!

After some stops and starts with getting going and getting the work truck stashed so we didn't have to make the ENTIRE trip in separate vehicles, we ended up getting to Portland Thursday night around 9. We stayed with some friends overnight and we all headed up to the lake Friday morning.

We had an excellent weekend. Four couples, some kids, some dogs and some siblings (mine included) managed to make it up for all or part of the weekend. The weather, suprisingly, was absolutely gorgeous and warm! The lake was beautiful, as usual, and the water was even warm enough to swim!

We had a great campsite at Cresap Bay Campground. It was very quiet; there was a lot of greenery and foliage between the sites, which really helped buffer the noise between campsites. They even had hot showers!! Ah...bliss!

The food all turned out great! Our stuffed peppers were SO good. Oh my gosh...I cannot wait to make those again! My salsa was well loved, as were the turkey burgers. YUM! Some of my food did get soggy. So gross. I am totally going to try my friend Shorey's idea of dry ice next time I go camping. Overall, it was good.

Here are just a few pictures, I didn't take that many this year. We did have a great time. It was great to see our friends, get to visit and laugh, and get to hit up our old stomping grounds again.

My brother...cold chillin'

I think Chris did win the fishing derby...



Silly Self Portrait




Lake Merwin, looking East....so beautiful




Lake Merwin looking West Saturday evening.



The lake was kind of choppy Saturday evening and the wind was kind of blowing...it made the rooster tail look so awesome!!

Sunday morning we got on the road about 11 and drove for about 7 hours. My view looked like this:




Only 15 more miles to go!

We had a really great time! Lots of laughs, fun, food, sun, boating, fishing and most importantly: friends!

We are already planning and looking forward to next year!



Camping Food Prep

We are getting ready for a weekend of camping and boating with some great friends! We are really looking forward to getting away, hanging out with some fun people and getting back to one of our favorite lakes from "back home".

I must tell you that I am not what one would call a "roughing it" kind of camper. In fact, I was chatting with my mom earlier today, and I was telling her that I am good for a couple of nights or a long weekend, but I would not be having fun if we were camping for say a week or longer.

There are several reasons why.

First of all, we car camp. We don't have a camper or a trailer or anything like that. We sleep in the back of our suburban (very comfortable actually), but not having a kitchen somewhat limits what I can do with food. And of course, the food is a priority for me!

Also, no kitchen and no refrigerator means that I have to pack all my cold food into coolers with ice...which eventually becomes soggy cold water. I don't care how carefully I pack, at some point my food gets soggy and gross. And then there is the issue of cross contamination in all of that water with meat, vegetables, dairy and more. Gah! The mix of germs could be enough to fell a healthy horse!

Second, still relating to food, I am kind of OCD when it comes to my hands. I have to wash my hands a zillion times when I am cooking or doing something messy. Well, washing your hands is difficult when you are out in the woods in the dirt and no running water of nature.

Plus, how annoying is it to try and prep good yummy food at a picnic table with bugs and pine needles everywhere?

Another reason I am not much of a long-time camper? No showers. Oh, sometimes a campground will have a shower, but it just isn't the same. I am only good for a couple days without a shower. After that I start to feel super nasty, my hair gets super greasy ( I do NOT know why...it's gross!), and I just feel like shlub. I do brush my teeth every day....I can't stand to have nasty teeth.

So, maybe I'm a little bit of a diva or princess when it comes to camping. I know. I can't help it. I try to be a good sport. We just compromise. We just go for short periods of time that I can handle. :-)

Anyway, we are getting ready to go and over the years I have discovered some tips and tricks to help me deal with some of my food related issues for camping.

First thing is I do 99% of the prep work at home before I leave.

For example, for this weekend I made my Shamelessly Stolen Pasta Salad, which is great for camping because it makes a lot and travels well. I made the whole thing today and tossed it into a big gallon zip lock bag. DONE. Now when we go to eat it all we have to do is shake up the bag and add a little extra dressing if it needs it. We can serve it right out of the bag; the bag stays pretty well sealed; and if we do happen to eat it all, the bag can go in the trash instead of having dirty dishes to deal with or take back home.

Tomatoes and cucumbers from my garden!

Also, I made my famous Mediterranean Turkey Burgers. Again, I did all the prep work here at home, in my fully functional and clean kitchen. I mixed the ingredients all together, made the patties and then put wax paper between each patty and put them in a big gallon zip lock bag. The bag went into the freezer. The meat patties will now be frozen when they go into the cooler and will take that much longer to defrost, reducing time in the "danger zone" for bacterial growth, and they also will help keep the cooler colder longer. WIN! They will be defrosted, or mostly so, by the time I want to use them.

We are having steak and veggie (separate) kabobs one night as well. The steak got cut up and skewered and seasoned here at home. They are in a large sealed tupperware (because the skewers will poke holes in a zip lock bag), also in the freezer. Again, it helps keep the meat out of the danger zone and keeps the cooler colder longer. They will be defrosted by the time I want to use them. The veggies are also already skewered and seasoned and in a separate tupperware container (no cross-contamination). They are not frozen.

We are going to make some stuffed poblano peppers while we are camping, too. Again, I did almost all the work here. Halved and seeded the peppers, washed and dried them and placed in a zip lock bag. Made the seasoned cream cheese filling and placed it into a tupperware. Took a cooked rotissiere chicken, shredded the breast meat, to go on the peppers later, put that in a zip lock bag and stuck that in the freezer, too. It is important to me to keep the meat cold as long as possible. All we will have to do at the campsite is assemble the peppers and then grill them They will be SO yummy.

Stuffed poblano peppers (from the garden) that we made a week or so ago. DELISH!

I also made a big ole batch of salsa. I used a bunch of stuff from our garden and it is all chopped and mixed and in a big tupperware ready to go. 

Banana peppers, jalapenos, tomatoes and garlic from the garden for salsa!

Tomatoes, onion, garlic, jalapenos, banana peppers, cilantro, lime, salt, pepper! SO YUM!

I get tons of compliments on my salsa...even from avowed salsa haters!

I also made some tzatziki sauce for my turkey burgers and that is all prepped and mixed and in a tupperware ready to go.

Doing all of this prep work at home makes the actual camping experience so much better for me. I worry less about my food going bad; I worry less about getting my hands messy; it is so much nicer to just be able to cook when I'm ready to cook instead of having to prep and cook!

We are having: zucchini muffins for breakfast! Haha...yup...they are frozen from my batch making session earlier this summer and I will just throw them in the cooler and they also will be defrosted and ready to eat by the time I want to munch on them. Chris is not much of a breakfast person and I find trying to make breakfast while camping EXTRA annoying.

What kind of things do you do to get ready to camp? Do you have any special tricks or tips to make the food prep easier? Do you cook gourmet food or just do burgers and dogs? What is your go to breakfast for camping?? Let us know in the comments!!

July 2010

This photo captures what our summer was all about!

Well my friends, the majority of July and the entire month of August and now half the month of September have passed with no updates from me.

I have had such an amazing summer. The best summer I have had in a long, long time. Our summer was filled with fun, friends, food and adventures.

After the fourth of July, the big doings was our trip with some great friends to Lake Billy Chinook for a weekend of camping and boating. Chris and I had never been to Billy Chinook before, but it lived up to the hype in every way. It was gorgeous, huge, hot and sunny. We camped for two nights with three other couples, one child, McKenna (poor thing-hanging out with all us adults!) and three dogs.



We rolled in Friday night and spent the evening socializing and relaxing. Saturday morning we were out on the water by about 10:30 and spent the entire day relaxing and checking out the lake.







By mid afternoon we had a need for some shade and Miss McKenna wanted to go on the “fast” boat. Apparently she was tired, too.



This is McKenna totally zonked out on the boat. So sweet. :-)

Later that night Chris and I prepped dinner for the crew, serving marinated beef, chicken and veggie skewers, along with my famous (recipe stolen from a good friend) pasta salad. It is the easiest pasta salad in the world to make, and a huge hit with almost everyone. It is GREAT for potlucks and parties.



Sunday we got on the road after breakfast (provided by Charlie and Julie-Thank you it was delicious!). On our way back we stopped along part of the Rogue River and took a few pictures.





On our way up to Lake Billy we discovered another lake that is about 40 minutes from our house. We had no idea it was there. It is a big reservoir called Lost Creek Reservoir. The following weekend we took our boat out there for the first time. It was awesome! It is not a busy lake; there is plenty of room to go and lots of little coves and beaches to hang out.



Plus, best of all, Chris’ pager and phone work at the lake, so it is someplace we can go, even when he is on call.


The rest of July flashed by in a blink and then we were into August.

I was back in school and Chris was working, of course, but we still managed to do a lot of fun things. The end of July I rode with Chris to the beach for a couple of days. It is always very relaxing for me to go because I have NOTHING that I have to do. I read and relax and enjoy the sunsets.

Chris had a class in Portland one week so I rode along and we spent three days in Portland. We had an awesome time. The weather even cleared up for us while we were there! We went to an excellent Happy Hour at Hayden’s Lake Front Grill in Tualatin with some good friends, where we laughed and laughed and drank wine and enjoyed lovely company. We did some excellent people watching there. Who knew there were actual call girls in Tualatin?

The following day we spent with some other friends at the Tualatin Crawfish Festival. It was fun, but really hot! Our friend Danny ate some crawfish (no thank you!), we saw some other friends as were wandering through the exhibits, did a little wine tasting and then decided it was time to cool off. We spent the rest of the day on our friends’ boat on Haag Lake in Forest Grove. It was wonderful. Our other Lake Billy Chinook boating/camping friends were there, too. It was great to have no boat ownership responsibilities and be able to just hang out and relax on the water. That night we enjoyed the hot tub at Danny & Sarah’s where we were treated with several shooting stars from the Perseid Meteor shower. All in all, it was a fabulous weekend; very rejuvenating.

We had lots of great times with friends all throughout the summer and feel really blessed to have such great and caring friends in our lives. We really appreciate all of them for letting us stay at their houses while we are in town and for making the trips down here to see us.

More on August in an upcoming post!