Thursday, August 27, 2009

Tips for a Painless Lake Powell Trip Part I

Photobucket

These tips would work for any trip where you are going to feed a lot of people, but have a kitchen that is small and painful, like a kitchen on a house boat. I fed about 30 people for 6 days all by my lonesome self. So the first must do tip is . . . . .

PRE-COOK or PRE-PREP AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

The following things I precooked and froze:
Bon-Jon (I just discovered I have never posted this recipe! wow! top 20 for sure, stay tuned . . )
Beef Stroganoff (I haven't posted this recipe yet, stay tuned)
re-fried beans (stay tuned)
beef chili (which I used for nachos)

The following things I pre-prepped and froze:

Thin sliced steak for steak sandwiches (still need to post that recipe too)
cut and marinaded chicken for chicken kababs
shortcakes for peach shortcake


The following I prepped to stay cool;
chocolate chip cookie dough that I rolled into log and rolled in parchment so I could cut them into cookie pieces
pancake mix (killer "mostly whole wheat recipe" stay tuned . . . )
granola
apple cider syrup ingredients (stay tuned . . .)

The more you get done at home, the happier you will be. This brings me to a kitchen tool of the week (which I haven't done for months)



A food saver. Yes, they seem like one of those lame, pointless, take up space on your counter appliances, but I use it ALL the time! Once you put food in a food saver bag, vacuum it and seal it, it is bomb proof. Lay it flat in your freezer, and soon enough you have nice stackable frozen foods that won't leak once they thaw out.
If you have lots of frozen foods, nicely stacked in a cooler, you can put a small brick of dry ice just to ease your mind, but really it will stay frozen for up to 7 hours in a cooler till you get to your destination to get it into a freezer.
Sure my kids go no attention while I was home fervently prepping all this food the week before powell. However, my book got loads off attention while I was on the lake because I didn't have much to prep!

note: I read the book "Julie and Julia", way too boring for dropping that many F-bombs, I however, still want to see the movie, despite the book being Lame, (that's right, with a capital L). It did however make me want to make my own mayonnaise.

2 comments:

Sarah @ Mum In Bloom said...

Looking forward to trying those recipes! So, did you actually vacation at all? I remember when hubby & I first started dating (long distance) I'd tell my friends everything I'm making b4 his visit & they'd be like - so what are you just going to eat the whole time. I think the preparation is half the fun. It also makes you look so good when serving up all kinds of amazing meals in record time :) I host alot of holidays and couldn't survive them without pre-preparing everything! Martha Stewart would approve!

PS - I spotted a good self-published cookbook on a blog today that might catch your interest http://a-homesteading-neophyte.blogspot.com/2009/08/eating-homestead.html

Marianight said...

Hey!.. I'm very interested in byuing a food saver like yours.=) I visited the FoodSaver website and saw that they have three avaiable models. Which one did you buy ? And how did you order it..? (I live in Portugal and they don't sell it here) Are you happy with it ? *

thanks