Virtual Running Date No. 50: A Camping we will go!

Good morning, Crushers!

If this was a running date (and I've been cleared for running again - whoot!), I'd tell you all about our camping trip.

We got back from our camping trip on Sunday night, and I would like to say it was a total success. We had perfect weather - upper 70's-low 80's - and less mosquitoes than I thought. Like many northern states, Wisconsin could claim that the mosquito is the state bird during summer. I'm glad it's really the robin though. I digress...

View from top of the fire watch tower.

People told us to our face that we were nuts for taking a 3 month old camping. I even thought it when I saw how packed our SUV was just to take two adults and one tiny person to Peninsula State Park for 2 nights. So. Much. Stuff. We may cave and get a minivan before you know it. Or a truck. Anyway...

We camped with our friends Adam and Erin and their three girls (ages 5, 3, and 1.5). They camp like pros and bring everything you could possibly need for five families. Now that's some awesome preparation. The only things we forgot were a light blankie for Ellie and a bottle brush. Not too bad for our first camping trip with a kiddo!

Hiking with Ellie! (Yes, she had a hat, but I took it off for the photo)

 Our eggs and sausages with the chopped up veggies made breakfast easy. Erin and Adam had noodles with their girls the night before, so they asked if we could add them to some of the eggs. Scrambled eggs and noodles? Apparently it's a family recipe from their German heritage. No matter, it was surprisingly delicious! The breakfast cookies were also a hit. Only four ingredients and it was nice to just have a quick breakfast before packing up the tent!

Playing in the shade with daddy!

Erin made tacos and had all the fixings for dinner. Tacos while camping? OK! Again, delicious. We had a picnic lunch by the beach after seeing a lighthouse and climbing a fire watch tower. Camping was great.

Now to do it all over again next weekend... We are nuts.

Camp cooking: Breakfast "cookies" and food prep

Hello Crushers,

Note: Yes, this is Friday, so technically there should be a Faith-filled Friday blog post, but I switched it up and did that yesterday. Here is a recipe instead.

As you know, Steve and I love being outdoors. This includes camping. This means we're taking our 3-month-old daughter camping this weekend. This probably means we're half nuts.

I'm really OK with that.

We're camping with some friends who have 3 girls under the age of 6, so we'll all just be kid wranglers. They've done this tons of times, so if we start letting our novice show, they can help guide us to where we need to go. I'm very thankful that they are also experienced camping cooks and are making tacos for us on Saturday night! WIN!

Since we're dividing up the cooking duties, we have breakfast to make. We're going to do omelets on our little propane stove top. In order to make this as headache free as possible, I chopped up a bunch of veggies ahead of time and put them in little plastic food containers. Although, I've been moving toward more glass containers at home, I'm sticking with plastic for camping because a) it's lighter and b) I don't care as much if I drop or break it.

We are packing eggs, cheese, butter, milk, cooking spray, diced peppers, diced onions, other veggies for snacking, PBJ fixings, and these breakfast "cookies" that I found on the Internet thanks to Pinterest. Unfortunately, the link doesn't go to the same recipe. It goes to some paleo breakfast bars with almond flour, so I have no idea who to attribute this recipe to. Since I didn't follow the recipe exactly anyway, here is my version of breakfast cookies.

Breakfast "cookies"
2-3 Very ripe bananas
1.5 cups oats (I used old fashioned oats)
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 tsp-ish cinnamon

Directions:
Peel and mash the bananas in a bowl. I found it easier to break the banana in pieces first. Stir in the oats, applesauce and cinnamon. Then you can either add the raisins or save them to sprinkle on top. Since I was making these at 10:30 p.m. last night, I ended up baking these in a greased 13 x 9 pan so they're more like bars than cookies. I sprinkled the raisins on top instead of mixing them in because I thought it looked nice.

See?

YUM!