Valentine’s Day tends to bring about strong opinions by everyone, whether they are excited about an intense romance, dreading the loneliness, or feeling an upwelling of bitterness towards all of the pink-and-red-drenched stores. No matter where you fall on this scale, go camping on Valentine’s Day this year. Falling on a Sunday, this is a great opportunity to break away from the suburban life to focus on how you feel. The experience will fulfill anyone’s personal needs on this emotional day. Continue reading “Valentine’s Oatmeal Pancakes with Dried Fruit Compote”
Author: Emily
Butternut Pecan Cakes with Honey Apples and Mascarpone
I love the idea of creating recipes that are very gourmet, but still fulfill the requirements of easy camping recipes, with sturdy ingredients that are satisfying and quick. This recipe is a wonderful example of the dualistic idea of dirty gourmet, and was one of my first creations for the blog.
It was autumn, and I had recently planted my first fall garden. I planted vegetables that I had not used very often in order to inspire my creativity and motivation. One vegetable I was very excited about was butternut squash. I decided to work with it before the garden was ready, and the first recipe I tried at home was Alton Brown’s Butternut Dumplings with Brown Butter and Sage. It was complicated and took a long time, but yielded fantastic results. A boy was in charge of cooking the leftovers, and he squashed them (pun intended) into little cakes thinking that was the proper way to prepare them, but they were still great! So, we used that as a jumping-off point for the butternut squash recipe we’ve created here.
Continue reading “Butternut Pecan Cakes with Honey Apples and Mascarpone”
Citrus Spiced Mulled Wine
After arriving at the campground in the rain yesterday, we were thrilled to wake up to a beautiful sunny day. It couldn’t be more perfect for our New Years launch party tonight! We managed to also score a triplet of campsites that will give us plenty of space for mingling and chowing down. We’ve decorated ridiculously for a normal weekend camping, but it is very Dirty Gourmet.
If there’s anything left to do in 2009, its feed our friends one more time. And we must add a warm winter cocktail to the menu. Each drink we tested before this had too strong a flavor and smell of hard alcohol (usually bourbon) and required specific ingredients to make them work. This drink is very easy to improvise. If you have any of these ingredients on hand, it will make your cheap bottle (or box) of wine into a pleasant warming treat at the end of a long adventure.
