Camping and Catching Up…

As I mentioned in my Friday Favorites, last week I spent a few days “camping” with my husband and my parents. I say “camping” because we were staying in cabins with a kitchen, bathroom, and electricity. We took along Yellowdog (our yellow lab) and my parents’ dog Bowser. We had a blast hiking and taking the dogs swimming in the lake.

It will probably come as no surprise that my favorite part of camping is cooking on the campfire. Don’t get me wrong, the food we made wasn’t particularly gourmet.  It was delicious, though! The first night we had the traditional camping meal that my mom has made as long as I can remember – chicken and potatoes cooked in foil in the campfire.  I cheated a bit and took my crock pot along, too, to make sloppy joe style sandwiches that would cook while we were hiking in the afternoon.  While it wasn’t anything fancy, it was fun to cook hot dogs on the fire and roast (perhaps I should say burn) marshmallows. We even got a bit creative making mountain pies.  We used some leftovers from the saucy cheeseburger sandwiches (similar to sloppy joes) that I had made in the crock pot the night before to make delicious savory pies. My hubby did a little bit of experimenting on his own creating a pie filled with chocolate (from the smores supply) and cherry pie filling.

It seems that every time I get home from vacation I have a difficult time getting back into the swing of things. I do a good job preparing for vacation – grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, scheduling blog posts. However, once I return and get back to work, it always seems to take me a little while to get everything done – especially new blog posts. There’s just something about coming home from vacation that makes me want to take a nap instead of getting things done (sort of like the two dogs after hiking)!

To complicate things a bit, this weekend I got a new MacBook Pro to replace my old one that had seen better days. So, in addition to trying to get caught up on the usual post-vacation chores, I’ve also been trying to switch from the old laptop to the new one. I have switched most of my files over, reorganizing in the process, and I am finally writing my first blog post from the new laptop! My goal for the rest of the evening is to finish getting things set up and work on a few posts for the rest of the week. So, stay tuned… there will be more to come in the next few days. Tomorrow is my update on the $100 challenge, and there are a few recipes waiting in the wings, too!