Campfire Cooking

Nate and I went camping with some friends this past weekend. We always split up the cooking duties--one couple takes breakfast and one of the dinners, while the other couple takes lunch and the other dinner. We were in charge of lunch (just sandwiches, chips and salsa, veggies and fruit) and Saturday's dinner. We cook everything right on the campfire grate, so anything we can wrap in heavy duty foil is a good idea.

I found this recipe for Pesto Chicken Packets in my trusty Betty Crocker Cookbook. It looked super easy (easy to prep while sitting at a picnic table in the middle of the woods) and delicious, too. The recipe only requires four things: chicken, tomatoes, zucchini and basil (I made my own pesto).

The chicken was super tasty and, like I thought it would be, easy to make. It took about 20 minutes over a pretty hot fire to cook. I think each packet could have used a bit more pesto (the recipe says it makes four servings; I made six by adding more chicken and a bit more zucchini and tomato).

I think it's a great starter recipe--you could add more vegetables, different vegetables or even put a different sauce on top. We served ours with a rice, black bean and corn salad. It was a hit! (And for the record, Betty Crocker is/was not a real person :)).

Honey-Mustard Glazed Salmon

We bought some great-looking wild salmon fillets from Outpost when they were on sale a while ago. I've had a hankerin' for salmon lately, so when we decided to make them, I busted out my Betty Crocker Cookbook to find a recipe.

I found a great, super easy one that turned out really well and tasted great (although, as usual, we cooked the salmon a little too long).

Honey-Mustard Glazed Salmon

• 1 Tb. packed brown sugar


• 1 Tbs. butter, melted


• 1 Tbs. soy sauce


• 1 Tbs. honey


• 1 Tbs. mustard (we used Dijon)


• 1 Tbs. olive oil


• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped


• 1 lb. salmon fillet

Mix all ingredients (other than salmon) in a bowl. Place salmon in a baking dish and coat it with marinade. Place in fridge up to an hour (but at least 15 minutes).

The recipe says to broil the fish, but we don't have a broiling pan, so we just baked it. We baked the fish (if I remember correctly--I should have written it down!) at 375* for about 20 minutes. But be sure to check the fish every five minutes or so to make sure you're not overcooking it.

We served the fish with a random package of flavored chickpeas I got at Trader Joe's a while ago (they were pretty good!) and asparagus with our favorite sauce (much like the salmon marinade, we just combined 1 Tbs. honey, 1 Tbs. mustard and 1 Tbs. olive oil. Drizzle over asparagus).

Chicken & Leek Linguine

This was another meal out of the October issue of Cooking Light. I picked it mostly because we had gotten some leeks from the CSA box, and I had to figure out what to do with them.

Here is the recipe. It was a pretty simple, quick dish to make, although it took some juggling. While I think I'm a pretty decent cook, I still sometimes struggle with trying to get different elements of the meal finished at the same time. For example, the linguine was done WAY before everything else was. It still tasted OK, but I need to get better about timing things.

Anyway, we followed the recipe pretty much as it is, except I didn't use parsley. It was good.

For a side, we had some broccoli, also from the CSA box, to use up. Nate doesn't like broccoli just plain, so I knew I needed to flavor it up somehow. I remembered a recipe in my Betty Crocker Cookbook for sesame buttered broccoli. I halved the recipe since we didn't have too much broccoli. It was good, except I overcooked the broccoli a bit (that's another thing I have to work on ...) and didn't drain out enough water, so it wasn't quite as flavorful as it should have been.

But all in all, it was a very good meal!

German-style Potato Soup

We got a HUGE head of cabbage in our CSA box a week and a half ago. Even after splitting it with my co-worker Mark (with whom we split all contents of the box) it was still a lot of cabbage. So I set out with a mission of finding something cabbage-y to use it in.

I flipped through my favorite crock pot cookbooks, The Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes, and found a recipe for German-style Potato Soup (I guess I'm continuing with the Oktoberfest theme!). The recipe calls for 2 cups of cabbage. I thought that was a lot, but after I used a bit more than 2 cups, you could barely tell I cut any part of the cabbage off!

I thought the soup was really good. Very hearty and filling. Nate just said it was good. I think next time I would add some more smoked sausage. I only used the 8 oz. the recipe calls for (even though I bought 16 oz.), and I think it could use more for a bit more flavor. We served the soup with a side of the applesauce I made about a week ago (I finally got Nate to admit the applesauce is a little too sweet).

Here is the soup recipe:

German-style Potato Soup

-4 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped

-2 stalks celery, sliced

-1 medium onion, chopped

-8 oz. cooked smoke sausage, sliced

-4 cups beef broth

-2 tbs. vinegar

-1 tbs. sugar

-1/4 teas. celery seed

-1/2 teas. dry mustard

-1/4 teas. pepper

-2 cups shredded cabbage with carrot (coleslaw mix) I used the head of cabbage with some peeled carrots

-snipped fresh parsley (I didn't use this)

In a slow cooker, combine potatoes, celery, onion and sausage.

In a bowl, combine broth, vinegar, sugar, celery seed, dry mustard and pepper. Pour over potato mixture.

Cover and cook on low heat for 8-9.5 hours or on high heat for 4-4.5 hours. Stir in cabbage mixture. Cover and cook 15-30 minutes more. Top each serving with parsley

Best-Ever Pulled Pork Sandwiches

I could swear I've blogged about this recipe before--we really, really love this dish--but I couldn't seem to find it in the list. So, here goes!

Nate and I have made this Betty Crocker recipe many times, often for a big group of people. Last weekend, we had some friends over, and it was the perfect opportunity to make it.

Here is the recipe. We usually follow it pretty closely, but make a few adjustments depending on who is dining with us. If it's just us, we'll make it spicier by added some more jerk, cayenne or hot peppers.

This time, we stuck with the recipe, but Nate--who was in charge of putting it all together--didn't exactly follow the directions correctly. It turned out great nonetheless. Instead of waiting until the pork was almost done cooking and then adding the BBQ sauce, he added it right away. After it cooked for the 10 or so hours, it was pretty liquidy. We took out some liquid and added more BBQ sauce.

We served the sandwiches on buns with broccoli slaw--a bag of shredded broccoli and carrots, mixed with a coleslaw dressing.

For a side dish, I made another Betty Crocker recipe: Potato Casserole Supreme. Here is the recipe (warning: there is a little dude in the corner of the screen talking about the website!). I did a few things differently:

-Instead of using shredded hash browns, I used the cubed (is that the right word?) hash browns.

-Instead of cream of chicken soup (I thought that sounded a bit odd), I used cream of celery.

The potato casserole was pretty good. It might even be good to make an entire meal out of it by adding some more veggies and maybe some chicken or ham.

In addition to the meals I made, our guests brought a lovely cheese ball--shaped like a pumpkin!--and pumpkin cheesecake cupcakes.

Cookout Side Dishes

On Sunday, we went to my parents' house for a cookout with some other family members. I was instructed to bring a potato salad, which I did. I also made a cucumber salad from two huge cucumbers my mother-in-law brought over about two weeks ago that I had to use up.


The summer potato salad was one I made before, quite a while ago, that I had found online. I had remembered it being good, but very lemony. I included a note on the recipe to tone down the lemon a bit.


Here is the recipe. If you like really lemony potato salads, then I suppose it's OK to keep the 1/3 cup. I used about a 1/4 cup (1 whole lemon) of freshly squeezed lemon. Also, I didn't add the hard-boiled eggs, just because I didn't really want to. I also didn't add parsley, mostly because I didn't have fresh and I forgot to defrost one of the frozen parsley cubes I had.





The potato salad was really pretty good, even though I cooked the potatoes a little too long.


It didn't really look like it made a lot, but it was the perfect amount for the eight of us, plus some leftovers.


The cucumber salad recipe I found in my Betty Crocker Cookbook. It's probably one you've seen or had before. It's really easy, I had all the ingredients on hand and it's low fat. My mom liked it so much, she kept all the leftovers!


I followed everything exactly, except that I don't really know how much cucumber I used! It's a nice way to change up eating cucumbers (we usually just put them in salads, or I have them with hummus).

Asian Chicken Roll-ups

I came across this recipe in my go-to Betty Crocker Cookbook last week. It was a good, easy recipe, and it was a good meal for a very hot day.

Here is a link to the recipe. The peanut butter, teriyaki, sesame oil and cilantro all worked really well together, and with the other ingredients. The only change I made was to use shredded, roasted chicken, rather than the cooked deli chicken the recipe calls for. Nate had roasted a chicken a while ago and shredded it for sandwiches.

We really piled on the shredded carrots and lettuce, so the roll-ups were huge. We had the roll-ups with corn on the cob.

Tres Leches Torta es Muy Deliciosa

I first discovered tres leches (three milks) cake at a great Milwaukee restaurant, La Merenda, about a year ago. Since then, I've had it a few more times. It's really a good cake, and it's very different from typical chocolate or yellow cakes.

For a recent girlfriend get-together, I decided to make my own tres leches from a recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, an old standby, Betty Crocker Cookbook.

This recipe is more or less what my cookbook says. There are a few differences: I made the yellow cake from scratch (also a Betty Crocker recipe) and, as my recipe calls for, I added rum (Barcardi Gold)--add a 1/3 cup when you mix the milks together and pour it over the cake (you can also use rum extract plus enough water to measure 1/3 cup, but what fun is that?).

Also, I made my frosting from scratch: In a chilled large bowl, beat 1 cup whipping cream, 2 tbs. rum and 1/2 teas. vanilla extract with electric mixer on high speed until soft peaks form. Frost cake with whipped cream mixture. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup chopped, toasted pecans. Store covered in fridge.

I wish I had a photo to share, but this was eaten pretty fast!