corn dogs

Sunday nights around here are fun type foods that we can eat while watching movies together.  One food I have always wanted to try and that they sale at the drive in is a corn dog so when I first saw this idea for corn dog muffins from Iowa girl eats I pinned it right away to my Movie/date night board.  Then I began to see a lot of other recipes out there for making corn dogs so I decided to go with this recipe from Gluesticks.  

Corn Bread Batter

1 cup milk

1/4 melted butter or margarine

1/2 c. sugar

1 egg

1 1/4 c. cornmeal

1 c. flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt.

Mix ingredients until just incorporated.

When the batter is made up and you are waiting for the oil to heat up you can get your dogs ready.  I cut the hotdogs in half and put small skewer sticks in each dog.

When the oil was ready I patted each dog dry so the batter would stick.  Dipped the dogs and then placed in oil.  They turned out crispy and delicious and we all ate way too many dogs while watching our movie. 

Camping part 2

Its hard to believe its now the last week of summer and the kids will be going to school next week! We are so blessed to of had such a hot summer.  We were able to enjoy picnics, swimming, camping and hiking.  Here are some pictures from our adventures at Fundy National Park

There are lots of great hiking trails there so we started the morning off with a great hike.  While we were getting packed up to go Josh (Micah's brother) was busy getting some dough together to rise while we were gone. 

This is Josh's hand built camping box!  It so great for storing all the camping dishes.  Plus the height is prefect as a working surface. 

When we came back from the hike it was lunch time so the dough got rolled out

And baked over the fire!  Nothing like fresh warm pita bread for lunch. 

Another camping favorite that we have been doing the past couple of years is corn fritters.  My mother in law mixes the dry ingredients before going and just adds the wet.  They are easy to fry up and everyone enjoys them dipped in maple syrup. 

Its sad to see summer come to an end but we had so much fun!!  Now bring on fall. 

camping Kabobs

When putting together our camping menu we came across a lot of different recipes and great ideas for meals.  One web site that was very useful was Echoes of Laughter .  She list lots of different meal ideas along with recipes and even list on what you need.  I am learning more and more that I love list.

Chicks on sticks is one meal that she has for her camping menu.  These looked so good we decided to make them here at the house to see if they were really tasty.  And of course they were so delicious.  I really love making kabobs in the summer time they are a great way to portion your meat.  And for any of you trying to stick to a grocery budget you know that meat is usually the most expensive part of your meal.

We knew a kabob meal would be easy and go a long way so Alex brought the meat in a freezer bag (Frozen) already in the marinate.  She didn't end up using the chick on  sticks marinated but this one instead.   So the morning we were going to enjoy these for supper we took the chicken out of the cooler while we were swimming so it would be thawed for supper time.  When we were ready for meal prep we cut up the fresh veggies (zucchini, peppers, onions) and started putting the kabobs together.

We grilled the kabobs on a little camping bbq that isn't in the best shape.  Good thing I had packed these little aluminum pans for Micah to use while grilling so they wouldn't go up in smoke. 

They turned out prefect!  The chicken was very flavorful and of course our plates looked so appetizing with rice and a lime!  

The kids really loved them to!  

So what are some of your camping favorites I would love to add them to my lets go camping board!

Camping

This is a very overdue post seeing how we went camping at the end of July.  But it has been a very busy summer with lots of family visits and hot hot days!  So let me tell ya how our camping adventures went.  

We packed up the minivan and headed down to Bar harbor to stay at Hadley's point campground for our first camping trip as a family of 5.  On the way down we picked up our new tent that we ordered from LL Bean.  We are really happy with it and pray that it will last us a long long long time.    

Once we were all set up our awesome friends (Simon, Alex and their little guy Theo) showed up to spend the long weekend with us!!  We love these guys so much and had such a blast camping with them.  Knowing how busy I would be with 3 kids, Alex did all the meal planning and most of the meal prep!  Did I mention how much I love that girl. 

Alex did a great job of searching lots of different blogs to come up with our camping menu.  I was smart enough to start my own camping board on pinterest so I could collect different recipes for future reference.   I will do a different post on the camping kabobs but here is just a little sample of one of our meals. 

Bar harbor is really beautiful!  One place we really enjoyed was playing at Sandy Point Beach. 

The water was extremely cold but that didn't seem to stop the kids from having fun in the waves.  And the view there was breath taking. 

After playing in the waves we packed up and headed off to find a nice spot to have a picnic lunch.  

If you were to ask Eben what he loves about camping he will say candy cereal.  Only when we go camping do we get to eat a variety of sugar cereal.  

Of course with the cereal we did enjoy these delicious greek yogurts with fruit.    

One of the days it rained so Alex and I went shopping.  These were my 0.93cent sunglasses I bought from the super wal-mart! hehehe.  Jaelyn really likes them as well.

Abraham was a great camper and helped daddy do a lot of the BBQing! 

We all survived the long weekend of camping and had a lot of fun!!  

A few things we did learn

1.  When camping in the states don't forget about the time change.

2.  Bring DVD player for kids to watch movies in the morning cause they are up really early in a tent.

3.  Smore's are best done in the morning with small kids so they are not full of sugar and all gooey right before bed.

4. Be prepared for rain (coats, umbrellas, and a shelter)

5.  Camping close to swing sets or play grounds is great for kids

And the last thing we learned was that it awesome to be intergenerational and to camp with other people.  We were two couples with 4 kids in total.  Sometimes I had to be nursing during meal prep or clean up.  Also the kids want to play and can be cranky right before meal times so it was so awesome that Simons brother (Ben) and girl friend (Sarah) joined us.  It was nice to have extra hands to help out when needed.  

Frozen fun

 

It has been hot hot hot around here so I decided to create some frozen fun for the kids to enjoy.  The hours just after nap time and before supper seem to be the hardest around here as I am trying to get last minute supper prep done, nurse a baby on demand and handle hot children who are ready for daddy to come home.   This little activity made that time fly by as the kids spent hours trying to dig these dinos out of the ice age.  

These takes a little time to do because I wanted the dinos to freeze at different levels in the ice so putting them all in with water I knew they would sink to the bottom (just like these two) and how much fun would that be?  

So I put a couple of dinos into a yogurt container and then added water.  After a couple of hours I placed in a few more that I wanted to be standing up so I only put a small drop of water and once they were frozen I added more water.

Once the ice block was frozen I just ran the yogurt container under warm water and it came right out.  I placed the ice into a pan and let Eben go at it with some rocks.  

Layer by layer he got the dinos out and it was awesome to see him start playing with them and creating a story as he was doing it.  Him and Lady J were out there for almost 2 hours playing, laughing and having fun together! 

You probably have already guested that lots of little toys are missing around the house and are frozen in different containers for those hot afternoons where the kids can go out and use their creativity on how to get them out of the ice blocks. 

Pepperoni Stromboli

This was a very delicious supper and it was even cooked on the BBQ.  

I started out with my delicious pizza crust recipe

1 cup water

1/2 tsp sugar

2 1/4 tsp yeast

2 Tbsp Vegetable oil

1 Tbsp Honey

1 1/2 cup White Flour

1 cup Whole wheat flour

1 tbsp Basil

1 tbsp Oregano

1. Dissolve sugar in water and add yeast. Let stand 5-10 minutes

2. Add oil, honey, flour, basil and oregano. (sometimes I throw in some natural bran and flax seeds).

3. Mix all together and then kneed for 5 minutes or until dough is a nice elastic constancy.

4. Let stand covered until doubled in size

Then using a rolling pin roll out the dough into a large rectangle.  

* I am trying to get better at taking pictures along the way but with 3 kids and guest that were coming I just missed a couple of steps! hehe

Once the dough is rolled out I layered peperoni and salamoi along the bottom and toped it with cheese. Then starting at the long side you begin to roll it up until it looks like this! 

Place on a cookie sheet, brush with an egg wash and sprinkle with italian seasoning.  Now you can either bake it in the oven or like I did put it out on the BBQ at a medium heat.  You need to be careful that you don't burn the bottom by having the temperature too high. 

And there you have it a delicious supper that everyone (even my picky eater) ate up.  Here is the  original recipe that I got my idea from. 

Sundaes in a jar

When I first saw this idea on pinterest I knew I wanted to add it to my 50 days of summer fun.   I have really loved having the fun list because it has helped me watch for sale items to buy.  Like when ice cream went on sale for really cheap I was able to pick it up for these treats and the homemade drum sticks.   They were really easy to put together and you can add whatever you want to them to make it your own!  

At first I thought I would do these up with the kids letting them put in their own toppings but then I had a much better idea!  I would make them up for me and hubby to enjoy on a date night.  Date night is something that is really special to us.  We enjoying setting aside one night week to be together.  Usually we stay in and enjoy a special treat while watching a video/sermon (this is the series we are doing now) or playing video games or board games. 

Ok back to the jars! hehe.  

They are simple to make I put a layer of ice cream on the bottom and then added chocolate sauce, peanuts, skor pieces, ice cream, sauce, peanuts and more skor ending with ice cream.  I placed a muffin cup liner over the top (just to make it look fun) and added the top and let freeze.  

When it was time for date night I added some M&M's and ta-da a delicious sundae to enjoy. 

Frozen Strawberry Treat

 

 These little treats have been so yummy for those hot summer nights.  I didn't really follow a recipe but I will give you the basic idea of what I did.

First make a graham cracker crust using the recipe on the graham crumbs box.  Next in a mixer I beat cream cheese and a bit of sugar until light and fluffy. Then I added in some thawed strawberries (maybe 1 cup), vanilla and last I folded in some cool whip.  Layer this all on top of the crust, cover and place in the freezer.

This was so simple and so delicious!!!