Cross Country Cruise Part II: Food

Okay, so food is more important to me than gear, that's why I'm leading with this post. Here are ideas for do-ahead meals (r.e. pre-made in BG, packed in a cooler, and good for a couple days) so we can eat luxuriously on the road. We're taste-testing many of these recipes this week, and so far they're all winners. Where did I get the recipes? From BA, of course.

Roast Provençal Chicken; probably the best roasted chicken I've made yet

Chicken served with some marinated veggies

Cherry tomato Vinaigrette: Amazing on pasta with feta

Noodle salad with pickled vegetables

Cross Country Cruise: Plans, Part I

Javier, the dogs and I are headed on an epic road trip mid-July. The first major destination is Portland to see some dear friends get married. Next, Los Angeles for a film conference, then Tucson, and finally we'll circle back to ol' BG before the school year starts (and before my sister, nephew, and mom come for a visit!).

What's special about this trip is that we'll be camping part of the way. Javier and I have never camped together before, the dogs have never camped at all, Lola has never been in the car for long distances... Will tempers be tested? Yes. But until then I'm having a blast planning everything out. I love to plan in general, but I love to travel plan best.

My favorite part of the planning process has been figuring out driving distances, mapping our route, and finding places to stay.

Here's our route:

The first day on the road will be a doozy. Ten and-a-half hours just to get to a KOA outside Minneapolis. Propping up a tent in a glorified RV park isn't very appealing, but I figure it'd be better to get a big chunk of the mileage done on the first day so we can enjoy our time in the national parks down the interstate. Also, Javier is severely afraid of ticks, and WI (the closer camping option) is a hot spot for those Lyme disease-ridden buggers.  Plus, this KOA in Maple Grove, MN (sounds lovely, doesn't it?) has putt-putt golf (see below), so that's all we'll nee to unwind, right?

The next day, though, it gets really good: the Badlands of North Dakota and Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park:

Looking at this, I can imagine myself queuing up Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town

Hopefully we'll see some of these, preferably at a distance from our tent.

On day three we'll be in Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest outside Butte, Montana. Specifically, we'll be staying in High Rye Cabin, built in 1919 near a mining district in the Fleecer Mountains. There's a creek nearby, but no running water in High Rye, which is fine because we chose to stay in a cabin to avoid bears. And according to all the warnings on the forest service website, there's a lot of bears in Beaverhead-Deerlodge. No thanks.

High Rye Cabin

Then off to Portland, with perhaps a brief stop-over in Seattle to see Kari and Collin. If anyone can recommend a good pet-friendly hotel in the City of Roses, or a good dog sitter for that matter (we need Paco and Lola watched for a night while we're at Beth and Chris' ceremony), that would be fantastic.

After the reunion with old friends, and after a bit of urban dwelling, it's back on the road, this time on the Pacific Coast Highway.  We'll camp for a night (or two!) in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. I did some research, and Hidden Springs campground seemed like a good bet, but we'll see what spot catches our fancy when we get there.

I'd like to see this, please, among the redwoods.

Depending on Javier's schedule at the conference, we may have another night to camp along the PCH. I need to do some more in-depth research, but so far Limekiln State Park sounds pretty sweet. 

Then off to L.A., or Orange County more precisely, where the dogs and I will be chilling while Javier spends his daylight hours at Chapman University. No camping in SoCal, unless we stop off in Joshua Tree on the way to Tucson. 

I don't think there will be any camping on the return trip. It costs more to camp in the Sandias outside Albuquerque than it does to stay at a Motel 6, and there's no way I'm camping anywhere near Oklahoma City, especially after the disaster this week. Same goes for camping near St. Louis, which is our normal penultimate stopover before our arrival home.

In "Cross Country Cruise: Plans Part II": Gear

A preview: Should we buy this tent?....

Food Diary VII

All recipes courtesy of Smitten Kitchen or Bon Appetite

Smörgåsbord open-face sandwich with smoked salmon; potato, horseradish, yogurt, lemon and dill spread; topped with radishes and dill

Maple bacon, pickled onion, fried egg, sriracha/mayo sauce, plus arugala 

Spring risotto with poached egg

Minestrone soup with homemade turkey meatballs

Roasted poblano peppers stuffed with corn risotto

Homemade meatballs with tomato glaze and brown butter mashed potatoes

Zucchini, corn, black beans and corn tortilla with poached egg

Food Diary VI (Biscuits)

Berry/Apple Cobbler with Buttermilk Biscuit Topping

Chicken Dumpling Soup with Chive Buttermilk Biscuit

Acorn Squash with Lime, cilantro and pepita dressing

Honey, Lemon, Rosemary roasted chicken with shallots

Sourdough Loaf

Hungarian Fennel Farmhouse Loaf

Food Diary V

Asparagus Pizza

Leek latkes with lemon garlic sauce

Perfect poached egg and homemade wheat bread

Veggie Bibimbap

Maple syrup brussel sprouts

The Manhattan (Recipe) Project: Bourbon Vanilla Cherries

Though I am fairly adventurous in terms of the fare I attempt, I don't feel as though I have fully forayed into the world of cooking. This is because I rarely ever "invent" any dishes. I am excellent at following a recipe, I have internalized many complimentary ingredients, and I can eyeball measurements more accurately than a year ago, but I rarely throw something together off the top of my head.  I want that to change: I want to be able to truly understand food at a level where the fear of failure, and the excitement of surprising tastes and textures by my own hand, is something I experience in the kitchen at least once a week. 

I gave this dare a try Sunday night.  In the December issue of Bon Appetit  I spotted a page with a lustrous photo of a Manhattan.  Next to the cocktail the magazine promotes a boutique batch of bourbon vanilla cocktail cherries, made by Barker & Mills at thebostonshaker.com.  What a great Christmas present for...myself,  I think, but this product truly is boutique: hand-pitted and seasonal, the business sold out (presumably months ago), and there won't be any more twelve-dollar jars until next autumn. So place your order now! the website proclaims.   

But I want these cherries yesterday. I bought Javier an early Christmas present of Bulleit rye whiskey that's sitting in our cabinet just waiting to make a yummy Manhattan. And I want to try something new.  So on our trip to the grocery store I buy a half-pound bag of cherries, some Gallo sweet vermouth, and Madagascar bourbon vanilla beans. At home I pit the cherries and muck up my hands with their red. I put the cherries in a saucepan with sugar, a bit of fresh squeezed orange juice, and half a vanilla bean split and scrapped so that the microscopic beans cling to the knife and my fingertips, and eventually get simmered in the juices of the cherries.

The result is cherries that taste like the innards of a fresh cherry pie, with the heavenly smell of the vanilla. The cherries are good enough to eat directly, or to place atop Javier's ice cream. And, as seen below, they compliment a Manhattan quite nicely.

Cherries, sugar,  bourbon vanilla bean, orange juice

Manhattan with vanilla bourbon cherries, stirred

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, Javier and I traveled to D.C. to visit my mom and my cousin Chris who was visiting from Vancouver. Ahead of time, my mom and I struck a bargain: she would fund Thanksgiving dinner if I made it. This was an easy deal to make as for weeks (alright, months) in advance I was looking at new and exciting recipes for the feast. To make it easy, the October issue of Bon Appetit arrived in the mail and it was dedicated in its entirety to what the mag stated as "the most daunting holiday of the year" (the pounds of butter contribute to the daunting aspect, the caption claimed).

After multiple emails and phone calls from various grocery stores in the days and weeks prior to the big day, my mom purchased all the ingredients, and we arrived with the rest (our collection of spices has grown impressively over the past few years). The menu was comprised of traditional dishes all with a bit of a twist: the turkey had a soy sauce-based glaze, the potatoes a bit of horseradish. The dressing had kale, pine nuts, and raisins. The squash was Persian influenced; the salad, Mediterranean. And instead of cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie, the two would be (somewhat) combined into cute little cranberry hand pies for dessert.

As happy as I was looking forward to devouring (I mean relishing) this fare, I was also happy to prepare the food because of the challenges that lay before me: How would I  plan the cutting, peeling, baking, steaming, and other various cooking verbs, in order for the meal to finish on time and without any disasters?

Luckily, on that second-to-last Thursday in November, everything went (nearly) without a hitch. My mom and Javier were gracious sous chefs, and Javier was also the turkey master. One batch of pine nuts burned black in the toaster oven, and there was a bit of stress of whether the turkey would finish on time, but we had back-up piñons, and the turkey roasted to a beautiful golden brown. We all sat down just after sunset with full plates, glasses of wine, and relished in the hard work of the day.

The photos below are obviously professional shots: in my rush to start eating, the photos I took of our dishes are sloppy and blow-out with the flash. I'm substituting my photos with those of Bon Appetit since it is from that magazine that I took the recipes. So though the images are not not my own, trust me that the food we made was as good as these look.

(P.S. The leftovers were awesome, too!)

Squash with Spiced Butter and Pomegranate

Italian Mother-In-Law Dressing

Whipped Potatoes with Horseradish

Arugula Salad with Grapes, Almonds, and Manchego

Cranberry Hand Pies