Cooking with Control

I showed my friend Kerry the raging fire I made for stew and she got some great advice from her husband Brett.  I don't need to have so many coals on fire with the dutch oven.  The way the lid is shaped, I can put coal briquettes on top too to more evenly distribute the heat!

This will make the bag of charcoal last much longer!

Feeding Camp Kids

Back in early July, I only had to cook for Michael and me, and it was easy because we could eat anything and usually preferred eating outside.  We've since gotten tired of eating out at the same places and also need to start getting back into the budget of a typical month of groceries.  This is a difficult task at a campground!  Add a couple of kids, and it's initially harder!  Take out a refrigerator and that spells multiple trips to the market within a week.  

I was used to going to the commissary every Monday.  Once the kids got here, I realized, I have to go every other day because our cooler only holds 1 half-gallon of milk in addition to the other perishable foods like cream cheese, string cheese, beer, wine, deli meat, green smoothies, apples, strawberries and eggs.  

Speaking of eggs, we have to get the small, half-dozen size because of our lack of space!  We have to get the butter and cream cheese in plastic tubs instead of the foil/paper wrappers.  Ziploc bags have become such a staple now that we have to protect anything have used that needs to be put in the cooler.  Why the ziploc bag?  Because any packaging inside the cooler has to withstand the constant water submersion!  

So far I get ice as often as I go to the market.  Why don't I just get a lot of ice in one visit, you ask.  I asked that of myself once and then found out that there wasn't enough space for that much ice and for all our food.  

The kids don't mind going to commissary so much, though.  They get to ride the shopping carts that mimic cars and they have more chances to ask me for treats!  

The logistics of getting food has taken some getting used to, but I've managed to feed the kids nutritious meals.  They get their grains and fruits and dairy and protein everyday.   Vegetables are another story.  They take more energy to make and sometimes I'm just plain lazy.  I have a stove burner that I attach to propane bottles and it is convenient to fire up, but again ........ I'm lazy sometimes.  Fruits just take a knife and - boom!  ... the kids pop them all in their mouth.  Vegetables, who knows if they'll eat it after all that effort.  

I have put in more effort to making meals by buying a cast iron dutch oven!  My first - and only - dish so far was a beef stew.  It came out delicious!!!  But I soon found out in a cast iron book that I'm not supposed to make tomato-based dishes in it because the acidity of the tomatoes affects the iron.  

Another thing to consider with all these eating is the washing of the dishes.  I already felt I was roughin' it in Florida when I didn't use the dishwasher.  Now I walk to the laundry room and use their utility sink!  I do the rinsing of the grime at the water faucet next to our bus because we don't have our plumbing hooked up yet - and because there is no garbage disposal at the laundry sink.  There are a lot more steps when you're camping and trying to run the household chores.

The kids don't mind - of course.  And that's worth all this effort.  They're enjoying themselves and we're saving a lot of money while we get to enjoy the outdoors!

The Children Have Landed

This morning was the kids' first in the Washington DC area.  To be accurate, our bus was now in Maryland at another military campground.  Our plane landed at 9:20 last night and it took one hour to drive from the airport to our campground.  The kids, however, did not fall asleep!  They were so excited about their new environment.  They couldn't see much outside but it was very different compared to California and Florida.

Despite Michael's having to go to work the next day, we were all excited to be reunited and stayed up a little extra to talk to one another.  When it was finally time to sleep the kids went to their bunk beds and had their first official night sleeping in their own bed!

The first morning with the kids in a campground setting was unsettling to me.  What do I feed them!?!?!  Michael had not had the chance to run all the wiring when we were in LA so our refrigerator was still just a cooler.  Since we had come in so late the night before I had nothing prepared for the kids' breakfast.  Thank goodness for Starbucks!!

It still was not a nutritious breakfast (just a morning bun and milk) so on our agenda was to load up at the commissary, which unfortunately was not yet open.   While we waited for 9am to hit, the kids explored the campground.

We really missed my family back in LA and sent them these pictures via text, our main form of communication with them over the next few weeks.  

Our first day seemed like a page ripped from "Little House on the Prairie," but with modern clothes and no need to pump water from a well.  When washing dishes, we had to walk to the main office building that housed the laundry room and a big sink.  The kids were eager to  help and made an assembly line of drying what I had washed.  Then we walked back to our bus amidst the woods, grass, and fresh air.  Everytime we had to go to the bathroom, we had to walk to the restrooms.  It wasn't a far distance, nor was the plumbing a mere hole in the ground, but it felt as if we were walking to an outhouse.  I would describe it as luxury car camping.  Not all the amenities are available in our bus, but we have convenient plumbing nearby when we need it.  

We also have the commissary, the exchange, and the library so close to us on base!  The kids are so far loving their outdoor living.  I had made sure to pack many of their outdoor sports gear so we could take advantage of the (I'm being redundant) ... outdoors, and the kids are taking advantage of it!

We had no neighbor next to us so the kids used the empty pad to practice their roller skating!

Welcome to Virginia!

We made it to Northern Virginia!!

Early morning on July 3rd, Michael and I hopped into the truck and bus and drove an hour into Springfield, VA.   It should have only taken 40 minutes, but we were in the midst of traffic.  I didn't mind because going at a slow pace allowed me to look at the surroundings of our new home.  I thought there were trees in Florida.   Now I beheld trees and HILLS!

Our journey to just get settled at the campground was complicated and laborious.  We stopped at the army base to unhitch the white car from the rental truck.  Then we entered the base to register at the campground with the bus and the white car.  Next we drove the white car and the rental to our storage space a few miles away.  We did this dosey doe of a car dance on one of the hottest days of the month for Virginia.  The high was in the high 90s.  Humidity was supposedly high, but it was actually not as bad as anything we experienced in Florida.  The environment felt more like an oven than a sauna but it was not welcomed as we sweltered and labored back and forth between the storage and the truck.

After we finished returned the truck, we headed straight for the convenience store on base and prepared for the next couple days' rest and relaxation - something we hadn't truly had in a couple of years.

G.G. Trucker

When I was young - about 8 or 9 years old - there appeared on TV ads for a school, Debbie Dootson's School of Truck Driving.  When I saw this woman driving her own big rig, I knew I wanted to enroll.  The thrill of driving wherever one wanted in a gigantic vehicle seemed liberating from my strict Catholic, immigrant upbringing.  My conservative parents immediately dashed my dreams of hitting the open road.  No way was their daughter going to drive vehicles for a living.  If anything, she would engineer vehicles. In an office.  Confined to a chair with minimum lombard support.  Oblivious to the outside until she endured traffic to commute to her bedroom community tract home.  Just like everyone else. 

I had long forgotten about this old fantasy of mine until it became apparent to Michael and me that, in order to transfer the bus and our household goods to our new duty station, I would have to commandeer a large, diesel, rental truck while following Michael who would drive our precious bus.  My fantasy became a bit of a nightmare for a short second when I remembered that I easily fall asleep on the road.  I have severe Highway Hypnosis.  The monotony of a two lane, even a 12-lane highway, weighs on my soul and eyelids and induces my consciousness  to shut down for slumber.  Now put me behind the wheel of a 22' long truck and what do we have?  Disasterrr.  But with time to plan our route and with no rush to get to DC, we chopped up the drive into 3 days with 2 legs of 2 1/2 hours each day.

My dad was a great help in taking care of the kids before we left.  He had arrived on a Wednesday and flew to LA with the kids on a Saturday, the same day that Michael and I rented the big truck.

It took us soooooooooooooo long to clear out the house of our goods and load it onto the truck.  We had planned on leaving on Sunday, but ran out of time and energy.  We thought we would leave early Monday morning but cleaning the house took so much longer that we left at about 1pm.  I had no time really to fret about driving the truck because I was just eager to get away from Tampa!  As Michael and I finally left our street, he radioed me on the walkie talkie and asked how I was doing.  I replied, "I actually feel giddy as if I'm going on a first date!  I am so excited to leave Tampa!"

Our first stop before we left Central Florida was to get our truck weighed.  We didn't pass 20 minutes out of town before we had to stop again.  I tried to back the truck into a big rig spot, but I kept messing up because I had our white car attached on a trailer.  When you have a trailer behind you, going in reverse is not intuitive.  A trucker approached me on my 5th try and gave me some pointers.  I was embarrassed thinking that he had probably been watching me with his buddy and laughing their heads off, but I was more grateful that the confusion was about to end and laughed at myself too.

Our next stop that first day was at a friends' house to check in on their summer property.  I was able to take in what I was handling out there on the freeway!

From my cab, I sit so high above the little people in their cars and SUVs.   

Our first night's stop was in St. Augustine.  We had always wanted to visit the oldest city in America, but were always working on the bus.  It was too bad we waited until we were leaving to see it because when we drove around it the next day, I found it so fascinating that I would love to visit again with the kids!  

This is a lovely picture of St. Augustine ...

I was a bit too tired to take something noteworthy.  Instead, as we sat at a restaurant for brunch, I took one photo of our view.  There is unfortunately a gas truck marring the scene.  

But we didn't care.  We were glad to not be working and to be enjoying ourselves, having food on dishes that would be cleaned up by someone other than us.  

The second day went smoothly and we reached Florence, South Carolina, just fine.  I ate a lot of snacks so I became even chubbier than what you see in the picture above.  Our last stop before ending up in DC was in a town 1 hour away from where we would store our household goods.  Why so close, you ask?  Well that last day was going to be filled with unpacking the truck and packing into a storage unit and setting up the bus at the campground.  A very tiring day lay ahead of us that we did not want to add a long drive in traffic to get start it off.

C O N V O Y ! ! !

We picked the hottest day to offload the contents of our truck.  We were also forgetful and didn't realize we had a gallon of water in the trunk of the white car so, on top of being tired, we were sweating, thirsty and had to pee really badly.  What kept us going was the vision of ourselves guzzling beer and munching on chips while we rest in front of our settled bus.  

We finally got to that fantasy at about 4pm, when our vacation from life and the kids began.