As I stated in my last post, I'm hoping to try out some recipes I've found for camp meals over the winter...and hopefully make a good list of things to take with us next summer. This first experiment was from a comment I saw on a home economics blog about making your own oatmeal packets similar to the store bought ones, only for less money. I love this idea because you can also control the sugar, and you can try other flavours that aren't available any other way. The author said her kids loved adding a dollop of peanut butter and a dollop of jelly to their oatmeal and I thought, well that would be easy to make at camp, even when back country camping. If you have a wholesale supply store in your area, you can buy those individual serving packets of jams and peanut butter like you get in a restaurant. If not, next time you go out for breakfast and get toast, keep the jam packet they give you. Restaurants aren't allowed to reuse them even if they aren't used, so it would just get thrown out anyway. You can take peanut butter in small containers, but I'm not sure how well jam lasts at room temperature. Of course if you are car camping, you can keep a small jar in your cooler.
PB&J Oatmeal - 1 serving
1/3 cup quick oats
2/3 cup water
1 packet peanut butter
1 packet jam or jelly of your favorite flavor.
Boil the water and add oats. The recipe on the package of oats calls for salt, but I never add it. It takes like 30 seconds for them to simmer to completeness, or let them sit for a minute. Add in the jam and peanut butter, stir well.
Conclusion: Squatch, not surprisingly, loved it, but Bubbie isn't a big fan of jam so took one tiny bite and handed me the bowl. I think she might like it better with just peanut butter. I will also try it with Nutella for her. As for myself, I thought it was alright. I wouldn't want to eat a huge bowl of it, I don't think, but it wasn't horrible. It was easy to make, and would be easy to pack for either car camping or back country. I also like that you don't add extra sugar, just the jam.
The great thing about taking oatmeal for breakfast is that you can easily let everyone have their own flavour choices. I have a big list of ideas for oatmeal and how to mix it up, so keep watching for more.
If you can't find a restaurant supply store, and feel weird about smuggling jam out of a restaurant, you can order them online. There are places that sell them individually, and some that sell in bulk. I'm trying to find one that's in Canada so the shipping isn't astronomically expensive and will post links when I come across some good sites.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Saturday, November 3, 2012
November means...
...I probably won't be blogging much. Not because of the weather, though I gotta say, it's not looking like this month will be any better than the last. The reason I won't be around much is that I'm one of those crazy people who participates in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and hopefully will spend a fair bit of my time writing rather than hiking or exploring the wilderness.
This winter we are hoping to get the whole family cross country skis. Chris has never tried this, having grown up within biking distance of a downhill ski hill, and he's really excited to see what the hype is all about. I, on the other hand, did a fair bit of cross country skiing as a kid...and I pretty much sucked at it...but that's okay because it's not about technique or speed. It's one of the best forms of exercise you can do, it gets you out exploring areas you might not be able to go with just boots on, and lets face it, it's pretty fun. I can remember a bunch of aunts, uncles an cousins heading out on skis, and building a small fire to heat up soup or chili, and making hot chocolate. As a kid, this was a wonderful way to spend a day. It's not always possible to build a camp fire, especially when on a public trail, but a small camp stove would work just as well.
Finding equipment can be a little challenging, but that's one of my goals for the next two months. If anyone has any ideas for where to shop for skiis and boots, I'd love some advice. My mum has been buying some at yard sales, but it's a bit hard to find boots for the kids.
As I look into good trails for cross country skiing I'll post more. I'm really excited to teach Chris and the kids, and to add another fun family activity to our winter agenda.
This winter we are hoping to get the whole family cross country skis. Chris has never tried this, having grown up within biking distance of a downhill ski hill, and he's really excited to see what the hype is all about. I, on the other hand, did a fair bit of cross country skiing as a kid...and I pretty much sucked at it...but that's okay because it's not about technique or speed. It's one of the best forms of exercise you can do, it gets you out exploring areas you might not be able to go with just boots on, and lets face it, it's pretty fun. I can remember a bunch of aunts, uncles an cousins heading out on skis, and building a small fire to heat up soup or chili, and making hot chocolate. As a kid, this was a wonderful way to spend a day. It's not always possible to build a camp fire, especially when on a public trail, but a small camp stove would work just as well.
Finding equipment can be a little challenging, but that's one of my goals for the next two months. If anyone has any ideas for where to shop for skiis and boots, I'd love some advice. My mum has been buying some at yard sales, but it's a bit hard to find boots for the kids.
As I look into good trails for cross country skiing I'll post more. I'm really excited to teach Chris and the kids, and to add another fun family activity to our winter agenda.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Fall Weather
Back in September, we were told October was supposed to be unseasonably warm...like in the 30's. I admit, I was already planning some fall camping trips but held off booking because, well, you can't always trust a weather report for the following day, let alone the following month.
Can I just say I'm glad I didn't book any sites? Wow. October, at least where I am, has been wet, windy, and cold! We had snow on Thanksgiving weekend. It melted as soon as it landed, so there were no chances to get awesome pictures of fall colors mixed with a blanket of fresh snow, but yep, it snowed.
It hasn't even been possible to go on day hikes. I think it's actually rained at least a little, every day of October so far, and with all of us having gotten the requisite beginning-of-school-colds that go around, I wasn't keen on taking the kids out in a cold drizzle to hike. Blech.
Fall is generally a great time to hike. The colors are the big reason, but as a general rule, the weather is cool enough that you aren't sweating like crazy, but not so cold that you need to bundle up. Usually.
On the off chance we do get some good weather, I thought I'd share a good resource for finding hiking trails.
The Ontario Trails Council website is a little overwhelming to navigate. It has trails for multiple uses for the entire province and let me tell you, that's a lot of trails. To make it easier to find something in your area, there are three drop menus in the top left corner. Put in your city (or the city you are thinking of travelling to) in the bottom menu. You can also set the second one to walking and hiking, which will cut out all the ATV trails etc.
I'll be honest with you, it's not going to give you only hikes in the town you specify. It will give you a long list of ones within a reasonable distance. For example, I put Lindsay as the town and got some trails as far away as Algonquin Park and Muskoka. However, there is a column on the list that states the nearest town, so you can scroll quickly through and find ones where you want to go.
Each hike/trail has a page of it's own with info on access, GPS coordinates, length, difficulty etc. as well as links to a website where you can get more information (or a map if you are lucky)
My only issue with the website is that camping and backpacking are lumped into the same activity on the drop down menu. When I first went to the website I was so excited that there were so many places to backpack camp, until I realized 9 times out of 10, it was a trail inside a park where you can camp, or it's close to a privately owned camp ground. Example, Peck Lake Trail in Algonquin states camping and backcountry camping in it's activities, but I know you can't camp on the trail. Kind of misleading. I'd hoped to be able to use that filter to find longer trails where you can backpack, like in the Queen Elizabeth II Provincial Park, or trails through crown land where you can camp for free.
Still, it's a great resource for finding a good day hike or a bike trail.
Can I just say I'm glad I didn't book any sites? Wow. October, at least where I am, has been wet, windy, and cold! We had snow on Thanksgiving weekend. It melted as soon as it landed, so there were no chances to get awesome pictures of fall colors mixed with a blanket of fresh snow, but yep, it snowed.
It hasn't even been possible to go on day hikes. I think it's actually rained at least a little, every day of October so far, and with all of us having gotten the requisite beginning-of-school-colds that go around, I wasn't keen on taking the kids out in a cold drizzle to hike. Blech.
Fall is generally a great time to hike. The colors are the big reason, but as a general rule, the weather is cool enough that you aren't sweating like crazy, but not so cold that you need to bundle up. Usually.
On the off chance we do get some good weather, I thought I'd share a good resource for finding hiking trails.
The Ontario Trails Council website is a little overwhelming to navigate. It has trails for multiple uses for the entire province and let me tell you, that's a lot of trails. To make it easier to find something in your area, there are three drop menus in the top left corner. Put in your city (or the city you are thinking of travelling to) in the bottom menu. You can also set the second one to walking and hiking, which will cut out all the ATV trails etc.
I'll be honest with you, it's not going to give you only hikes in the town you specify. It will give you a long list of ones within a reasonable distance. For example, I put Lindsay as the town and got some trails as far away as Algonquin Park and Muskoka. However, there is a column on the list that states the nearest town, so you can scroll quickly through and find ones where you want to go.
Each hike/trail has a page of it's own with info on access, GPS coordinates, length, difficulty etc. as well as links to a website where you can get more information (or a map if you are lucky)
My only issue with the website is that camping and backpacking are lumped into the same activity on the drop down menu. When I first went to the website I was so excited that there were so many places to backpack camp, until I realized 9 times out of 10, it was a trail inside a park where you can camp, or it's close to a privately owned camp ground. Example, Peck Lake Trail in Algonquin states camping and backcountry camping in it's activities, but I know you can't camp on the trail. Kind of misleading. I'd hoped to be able to use that filter to find longer trails where you can backpack, like in the Queen Elizabeth II Provincial Park, or trails through crown land where you can camp for free.
Still, it's a great resource for finding a good day hike or a bike trail.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Hike Haliburton Festival
I meant to post about this event last week, before the actual festival, but there were some computer issues. Sorry about that.
Hike Haliburton is a weekend full of guided, educational hikes through out all of Haliburton County. It was tons of fun, even though the weather wasn't great, and we only got to do a few hikes. There was something for everyone on the schedule, everything from learning about mineral deposits, to ghosts, to sled dogs.
The hikes have a registration system, which was a little complicated when I tried to do the online one, but calling was easy.
We kept the kids out of school so we could get to the Can You Dig It? hike in Tory Hill since it's all about minerals and the kids could find samples to take home. We got there a few minutes late thanks to construction on main street in Haliburton, and when we got to the meeting place, there was nobody there. Not sure if they just didn't wait, or if there was no one registered except us so the guide didn't come. (we called that morning, so maybe he didn't get informed there were people coming?) Anyway, that was disappointing for the kids but we made it up to them by going to Jake's BBQ Shack in Gooderham, then hit the Ghost Walk hike in Haliburton.
I grew up in Haliburton and was happy to learn so much about the history of the town. The tour guides were interesting, good speakers and shared lots of interesting highlights from the town's past. Not all of it was about ghosts, but still very interesting. I thought the kids would be bored, but they weren't and when we quizzed them afterwards to see if they'd actually paid attention, it was clear they had.
The next day, we went on the Sciensational Snakes hike and wow, so much fun. Weather was crappy, but the kids are now set on getting pet snakes, and are spending lots of time researching everything they need to know to take care of them. The guide for this hike had lots of captive bread snakes that the kids got to hold, and I don't think a single child there was afraid to get their hands on them, even the fairly large fox snake.
Next year, I'm hoping to take in more of the hikes. There were some really interesting ones that we just couldn't get to including one where you ride horseback for part of the way. How fun would that be? Or a canoe trip? There were celebrity hikers, including Kevin Callan, but we didn't see any of them. Hopefully I'll manage to get the info up early so if anyone is interested in attending next year, they won't miss it.
Hike Haliburton is a weekend full of guided, educational hikes through out all of Haliburton County. It was tons of fun, even though the weather wasn't great, and we only got to do a few hikes. There was something for everyone on the schedule, everything from learning about mineral deposits, to ghosts, to sled dogs.
The hikes have a registration system, which was a little complicated when I tried to do the online one, but calling was easy.
We kept the kids out of school so we could get to the Can You Dig It? hike in Tory Hill since it's all about minerals and the kids could find samples to take home. We got there a few minutes late thanks to construction on main street in Haliburton, and when we got to the meeting place, there was nobody there. Not sure if they just didn't wait, or if there was no one registered except us so the guide didn't come. (we called that morning, so maybe he didn't get informed there were people coming?) Anyway, that was disappointing for the kids but we made it up to them by going to Jake's BBQ Shack in Gooderham, then hit the Ghost Walk hike in Haliburton.
I grew up in Haliburton and was happy to learn so much about the history of the town. The tour guides were interesting, good speakers and shared lots of interesting highlights from the town's past. Not all of it was about ghosts, but still very interesting. I thought the kids would be bored, but they weren't and when we quizzed them afterwards to see if they'd actually paid attention, it was clear they had.
The next day, we went on the Sciensational Snakes hike and wow, so much fun. Weather was crappy, but the kids are now set on getting pet snakes, and are spending lots of time researching everything they need to know to take care of them. The guide for this hike had lots of captive bread snakes that the kids got to hold, and I don't think a single child there was afraid to get their hands on them, even the fairly large fox snake.
Next year, I'm hoping to take in more of the hikes. There were some really interesting ones that we just couldn't get to including one where you ride horseback for part of the way. How fun would that be? Or a canoe trip? There were celebrity hikers, including Kevin Callan, but we didn't see any of them. Hopefully I'll manage to get the info up early so if anyone is interested in attending next year, they won't miss it.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Random find in the garage...
Chris spent the day cleaning out the garage...actually he's still at it and it's well past dark. There were a lot of things out there I'd forgotten about, but the one thing he came across completely had me floored. There was a rusty cast iron frying pan hidden among the junk and I have no memory what so ever of buying one before this spring (which is not rusty)
So, this week I'll try researching ways to de-rust it, and will try to re-season it. I'll take pics and show you the progress or lack there of as I go.
So, this week I'll try researching ways to de-rust it, and will try to re-season it. I'll take pics and show you the progress or lack there of as I go.
Sort of jealous...
My parents bought a pop-up trailer last week and are taking it on a maiden-for-them voyage as we speak. The kids and I really wanted to go too but they went on Sunday night, and won't be back until today so the kids would miss 2 days of school. While I normally wouldn't have a problem with this, pulling them from classes for camping on the second week? Probably not a good idea.
This morning, with the temperature having dropped a fair bit, I asked the kids how they thought Papa and Lala were doing. They were hopeful that there would be less annoying people around since it's after summer. They also wondered what they'd be doing to occupy themselves without us there.
Camping without the kids can be hard to get used to when you are used to having them there. There's no one to keep entertained, you can nap when you want, eat whenever you feel like it, and if all you do is hang out around the campsite and read, well that's your choice. Also, you can try recipes for meals the kids are likely to turn their noses up at, or go on hikes that would have them complaining about being tired. Like I said, I'm kind of jealous. We tried a few times to get out for a romantic trip for just Chris and I, but having a sick dog kind of put a stop to those plans. Next year for sure though.
This morning, with the temperature having dropped a fair bit, I asked the kids how they thought Papa and Lala were doing. They were hopeful that there would be less annoying people around since it's after summer. They also wondered what they'd be doing to occupy themselves without us there.
Camping without the kids can be hard to get used to when you are used to having them there. There's no one to keep entertained, you can nap when you want, eat whenever you feel like it, and if all you do is hang out around the campsite and read, well that's your choice. Also, you can try recipes for meals the kids are likely to turn their noses up at, or go on hikes that would have them complaining about being tired. Like I said, I'm kind of jealous. We tried a few times to get out for a romantic trip for just Chris and I, but having a sick dog kind of put a stop to those plans. Next year for sure though.
Monday, September 10, 2012
First Day of School
Summer is officially over. Very sad. While there is a good chance we might get a weekend or two of camping in before it's too cold, it's not guaranteed.
What this does mean, is more hiking trips and after school activities. I'm not sure if I mentioned the kids want to train to do a few triathlons next summer, so swimming lessons are going to be a priority. They both do okay, but not good enough to be in a competitive race...okay they can't really do any more than doggie paddle. Also, they try out for the school's cross country team every year, and usually make it to the big county meet up, so we'll be working on their running a lot in September...I hope.
What this does mean, is more hiking trips and after school activities. I'm not sure if I mentioned the kids want to train to do a few triathlons next summer, so swimming lessons are going to be a priority. They both do okay, but not good enough to be in a competitive race...okay they can't really do any more than doggie paddle. Also, they try out for the school's cross country team every year, and usually make it to the big county meet up, so we'll be working on their running a lot in September...I hope.
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