Ready to Roll

It's Memorial Day weekend here in the US. Though not the original reason for the holiday, it's usually considered the unofficial beginning of summer. For us, that means camping season is finally here!

There are new tires on the RV, and it's clean and ready. Our clothing, personal items and food have all been packed, so we're ready to roll as soon as Shane gets home from work.

Unless things have changed in the past few months, the park where we will be staying has no wi-fi service, so it will be likely be Monday evening or later before you hear from me again. Considering how few my posts have been lately, that's probably comes as no surprise.

Anyway...I hope all of you have a safe and fun weekend, wherever you are!

Garden Pics and Stormy Weather

Our garden is finally beginning to look like a garden. 

That's great, in general, but the late growth is presenting a few problems.  Our early crops, like broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage, are just starting to take off.  They are cool weather plants, so not only do we wonder if they have time to mature properly before really hot temperatures arrive, we were counting on them nearing harvest by now so that we could sow other seeds in their place.

What to do?  What to do?

As they are still rather small, we are considering transplanting them back into pots and trying to over-summer them and put them back in the ground as large bedding plants in late August for a fall harvest.  I'm thinking this isn't the best idea.

We could just sacrifice them so we can use the real estate to plant our summer crops (i.e., zucchini, peppers, etc.)  It would work, and monetarily we'd only be out a few seeds, but I just hate the idea.

Or, we could leave them be and add more beds (raised or in-ground) to plant our summer crops in.  This is probably what we will do.

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We had thunderstorms with strong winds overnight.  Here is a limb from a small maple that has broken and is draped over the power line running from the pole to our house.  Our electric utility has been notified, but because we still have power, we are not on the priority list (apparently lots of folks lost power in the storm).  We've been told a crew will come out soon, but probably not today.

Problem is, more storms are on the way.  In the 15 minutes it's taken me to write this since taking the pic, the skies have grown dark again and the radar is turning red.  If there's much wind with this next round, we could easily lose power.

Still, I'll take this weather any day over the snow we had three weeks ago.

Unfortunate Weekend Events and A Week of Ham

Our weekend didn't turn out at all like we expected.  We had planned a nice visit here at home with my sister and brother-in-law on Saturday afternoon, with them staying overnight in the RV, then on Sunday we were going to join up with my niece and her family, as well as my daughter and son-in-law and spend the day at the zoo.

Instead, shortly after they arrived, my brother-in-law fell ill with some episodes of dangerously low blood pressure and he and sis spent the entire weekend in the hospital, with us making a few trips back and forth ourselves.  My BIL is 68, and has a known serious heart problem, but they ruled that out as the cause right away.  He is also diabetic and I think they have determined that some late and missed meals on Friday and Saturday, as well as some late medication, were the main reason his blood pressure was plummeting.  His blood pressure has since stabilized and he should be released today after one more precautionary test on his heart.

Because of the sudden change in plans, I have a ton of food in the house.  In anticipation of our weekend, I had baked a large spaghetti casserole for our meal on Saturday, prepped ahead a big pan of breakfast enchiladas, and I had thawed a half ham to cook today.  I also bought several kinds of individual-wrapped snacks that I had planned to take with us into the zoo.  Of course, very little of the prepared food was actually eaten, and I still have that ham to bake today.

I invited my daughter and son-in-law over for supper last night, so that took care of half the spaghetti casserole, and I individually wrapped half the breakfast enchiladas and stuck them in the freezer.  They'll go with us on our first camping trip in two weeks, along with the pre-packaged snacks.

Here's what I plan to do with the ham:

Monday:  Baked ham, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, asparagus, rolls.

Tuesday:  Ham with parsley sauce, boiled potatoes, green beans, salad.

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Wednesday:  The rest of the Baked spaghetti casserole, garlic toast, salad, home-canned peaches.

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Thursday:  All-American Ham and Cheese Roll, potato cakes, corn, asparagus.

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Friday:  Hawaiian Ham Quesadillas, tater tots, salad.

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Saturday:  Ham and shrimp pasta, garlic toast, salad.

Haphazard Homestead Happenings

Where does the time go?  The days are just flying by lately and so much is happening around here.

The gardening is beginning to show signs of growth.  Except for the potatoes, onions and ginger, everything we planted this year went directly into the ground as seeds.  Almost all the little seedlings have started to come up.  We have carrots, onion, radishes, peas, lettuces, Swiss chard, spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kohlrabi, turnips, and beets.  No signs of cauliflower yet, though.  We've been eating asparagus on a regular basis, and some of our rhubarb is almost ready to harvest.

We had a couple of nights of freezing temps last week (in late April?), but we covered everything and it all made it.  The weather, and therefore the garden, are running a few weeks behind this year, and I'm wondering now if we'll have any room for our late spring plantings that I had thought would follow behind some of the early crops.  Oh well, we might just have to build another raised bed or two.

Like everything else, our flowering trees are behind schedule.  Our red bud, white bud and crab apple are just now starting to bloom.  One of our young rhododendrons is in full splendor right now, though.

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I have almost completed my April craft project and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to finish by tomorrow afternoon.  Look for it on Wednesday, along with the rest of my April goals update.

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For those who enjoy hearing about Bob the Basement Cat, he is doing well, but we've come to the conclusion that he is either partial or completely deaf.  I'm not sure how we missed it, actually.  We can often go in and out of the basement and do whatever we need to do, and if he's asleep or just looking away from us, he might never realize we're there.  Also, when you speak or make other noises, his ears don't move toward the sound, not even a little.  It might also explain why his meows are so very loud and might be the reason he craves touch so much.

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Our weekend schedules are filling up fast for spring/summer.  A couple of biggish home improvement projects, a trip to the zoo on Mother's Day, a day of city-wide garage sales, and camping, have us booked up for most weekends until after Independence Day.

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19 more days until school is out for Kat, possibly for good!  We have decided we will unschool her once this year is over.  Learning about this lifestyle change is huge in our lives right now and is what I've been spending much of my time on recently.  I promise, though, that this shift won't turn this into an unschooling blog.  I'm not sure I'll blog about it much at all, but if I do, I'll spin it off to a separate blog much like I do with our RVing stories.  Just thought I'd mention it, since it's been taking me away from the blog and Facebook page lately.

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I apologize again for not being around to visit your blogs and pages much lately, but I'm going to try to remedy that this week. 

Simple Sausage and Egg Casserole

Here is an easy recipe that I adapted from a few others I found online and in cookbooks.  Add toast, biscuits or some homemade pastries, and maybe a bowl of fruit, and you have a simple weekend breakfast or brunch.  It can be made in the morning or the night before.

Simple Sausage and Egg Casserole

1 pound pork breakfast sausage
3-4 large potatoes
8 eggs
1-1/2 cups milk
1 teaspoon seasoned salt or seasoning blend of choice
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 Tablespoon snipped fresh parsley (or 1/2 teaspoon dry parsley flakes)
1 cup shredded cheese of your choice

Meanwhile, crumble and brown sausage in a large pan or skillet.  Drain; rinse if desired.  Spread cooked sausage in bottom of 9 x 13 baking dish that has been sprayed lightly with non-stick spray.

Peel potatoes and cut into 3/8" dice.  Bring to a boil in salted water and let boil about 1 minute.  Drain, then spread over sausage in pan.  Alternately, use a package of frozen chunky hash browns. Set pan aside to allow sausage and potatoes to cool.

In large bowl, combine eggs, milk, seasoned salt, pepper and parsley.  Beat until well combined.  Pour mixture over cooled potatoes and sausage.

To bake immediately, heat oven to 350°F.  Sprinkle casserole with cheese and bake for 20-25 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean.

To make ahead, cover sausage, potatoes and egg mixture, then refrigerate overnight.  When ready to bake, heat oven to 350°F.  Uncover casserole and sprinkle top with shredded cheese.  Bake uncovered for 40-45 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean.

Makes about 8 servings.

Mute Monday

Beautiful Weekend for Heritage Days

Shane ended up having to work on Saturday, but Kat and I decided to go to Warsaw Heritage Days without him.  This is the first time in many years (15?...20?) that I've gone, despite it being in my hometown of Warsaw, MO.  The festival, which began in 1981, is a celebration of the pioneering forefathers of the area's Kaysinger Bluff, now the site of the Harry S. Truman Visitor Center at Truman Lake.

The weather was beautiful and we had so much fun, eventually catching up with one of my sisters and her husband before going to visit my dad for a while.

I took lots of pictures of our day.  Here are few -- to see the rest click HERE or on the Heritage Days tab at the top of the page.

Rain Puts Damper on Getaway Weekend

We had a very soggy, damp, cold, not-according-to-plan weekend, in which I only took one measly food picture.  Yet I still managed to get two new posts out it at Haphazard Homestead on the Road.

Monday Miscellanea

We headed north on Saturday morning, dropping Kat off at her mom's and then checking out the Basswood Resort near Platte City, MO, to see if we might like to spend a weekend camping there. 

Platte City was also holding city wide garage sales, where we scored some good cheap and free stuff.  I found lots of tops for myself for 25¢ and 50¢ each.  When you're as messy as I am in the kitchen, you don't want to spend much on tops that will inevitable get grease spots on them.

Someone had an EdenPURE heater in the free pile with a note that says it "works, but heats slowly".  We grabbed that right up.  It may be just that they didn't understand how an infrared heater works, or it may need new elements.  If we have to replace elements, at $80-$100 it's still a bargain for this kind of heater. 

We drove by one home where several people were picking apples from their trees.  We pulled over and asked if they were selling their apples.  They told us they'd already picked and canned all they wanted and that we were welcome to pick as many as we wanted for free!  We picked about a bushel, but could have picked many, many, many more if we could have reached them.  They are very nice apples, both Granny Smith and a blush type, perhaps Gala.  We gave some away, we'll eat some out of hand, and I'll can the rest as pie filling.  I might make cider vinegar with the peels, too.

We didn't come close to seeing all the garage sales, but we had a late lunch date with Kat, my daughter T. and my son-in-law M.  My daughter's birthday was on Labor Day, so this was a celebration of sorts.  T and M follow a vegan diet, so they chose Cafe Gratitude.  (They have a really neat concept; click through to read about it.)  Cafe Gratitude serves a vegan and mostly gluten-free menu that focuses on local and organic foods.  They make the most amazing homemade ginger ale and a wonderful coconut milk, almond butter and vanilla smoothie.  The food was very good -- and filling -- the atmosphere was fun, and place was busy but not overcrowded at that time of day.  We all had a great time.

M, T, and Kat.

Shane and me.  Our table was in what used to be a storefront display window.

My hand-rolled veggie tamale with black beans and Mexican coleslaw.

M's "nachos" made with cashew "cheese and sprouted grain crackers.

We also saw this from the restaurant window.  I have no explanation. I don't even have a logical guess.

Saturday afternoon my dad visited and spent the night.  It wasn't really a planned visit; he was in town for other reasons and needed a place to sleep, and left fairly early on Sunday morning to do his own thing. 

We stayed home on Sunday and did this and that around the house:  laundry, a fall planting of lettuce and radishes, housework, etc.  We had no real plan, we just looked around and did things that needed to be done.

This week promises to be busy.  I still have those peaches in the freezer to work up, and now apples.  Kat gets out of school early on Thursday, and we have a fun weekend with my sister next weekend to get ready for. 

How was your weekend?  And what do you have lined up for this week?

Vacation Days 5 and 6 - More Fun in the Sun

Our last episode ended with a little rain.  That storm intensified a little to the east of us and dropped what is believed to be a small tornado in Cuba, just a little while after we left there.  But all that happened in the campground was some heavier rain for the rest of the evening and the loss of wi-fi in the campground.  Wi-fi in Missouri State Parks is a new amenity.  It's so new, in fact, that the maintenance guys didn't know what to do to get it back online, so we were without for the rest of our stay.  So what?  We were camping, after all.  It's not like we needed to be on the computer.

We woke up Sunday morning to bright sunny skies, so as soon as we could, we headed to the river.  We stayed a couple of hours, came "home" for lunch, and went back to the river for a few more hours.  By then, the skies were overcast again, but we didn't let that stop us a second day.  The temps dropped a little, but there weren't even any sprinkles until we were done playing and back at the camper.

Snorkling for sunfish.

Hey, she netted one!

Being a turtle.

Pretending to boogie board.  (It's touching bottom).

Since it was Sunday night, most folks had moved out.  There were just three other RVs in the whole park and a couple of tents.  None of them were near us, though, so it was almost like having the entire park to ourselves.  It was very peaceful.

Today was almost a repeat of last Wednesday.  We spent most of our day driving.  This time we did take the great advice of the Osage Bluff Quilter and ate at Steve's Family Restaurant in Lohman, MO.  It's about 5 or 6 miles off the main highway and worth the detour.  They don't have a website for me to link, but I can tell you they specialize in homemade fried chicken, catfish and ham, with sides like real mashed potatoes, country style green beans, pan gravy and local ice cream.  Served all-you-can-eat and family-style, of course.  It was absolutely the best food we had during our trip.

I was glad we ate there, but sorry that our change in camping plans also changed our plans to actually meet Patti and her husband.  I'm sure we'll catch up with them sooner or later, though.  Maybe we can use a return trip to Steve's Restaurant as an excuse to catch up with them...or use a visit with them as our excuse to go back to Steve's.  Sounds like a plan either way.

We pulled up in front of our house around 5:00 this evening, putting a wrap on this year's vacation.  But camping season isn't over yet.  I'm sure there will be a few more weekend trips in store before it is.

Vacation Day 4 - Wet

Today was cave day.   We went on a tour of Onondaga Cave, one of the show caves here in the park.  I was in this cave before, back in 1980 or 1981 on an impromptu camping trip with my sister and her family.  I can't remember much about it, but I did remember it's one of few caves that have "lily pad formation".  When we entered the cave this morning, it was a hot and humid 106° outside and a cool and clammy 57° under ground.  We came prepared, with jeans and jackets and were glad we did.

Later, we drove back in to Cuba to what might be the world's smallest Wal-Mart store.  Seriously.  It was about the size of a Dollar General, Alco, Pamida or whatever little department store you might have in your area.  It had just five checkout lines.  But they had what we needed, which was a small bottle of propane for our tabletop gas grill, a blow-up float ring for Kat, a pair of water shoes that won't rub blisters for me, and a pound of butter.  On a Saturday afternoon, we were in and out in 20 minutes.

We saw an unbelievable sight on our way home.  Rain!  Unless it clears soon, the lightning will knock us out of our swim today and possibly the fireworks display tonight (which was scheduled to make up for not having them on the 4th).  But it's all alright, because it just wouldn't be camping if it didn't rain on us at least a little.  And guess what?  Shane doesn't work until Tuesday, so we've decided to stay until Monday instead of leaving tomorrow.  We can't leave without one more day playing in the river!