An Escape

 

That's me!

I love this little dogwood type flower that was all over.

Huckleberry Cheesecake Ice Cream 

The highlight of July (probably the highlight of 2020 so far) was a camping trip to Lost Lake near Hood River, Oregon. I won't say it was relaxing, because camping is never relaxing for me, but it was a nice change from being home. It was great to be somewhere different and it's always wonderful to be surrounded by nature. We borrowed a friend's kayak and had so much fun taking turns with it on the lake. We are definitely going to become kayak people. 

I felt fairly safe as camping is an outdoor activity, but there were reminders everywhere of COVID-19. Most people were wearing masks in public spaces, but not everyone. Nothing feels normal this year. 

I prepped a bunch of food in advance. For the first night we kept it easy and did hotdogs and burgers, s'mores too. I mixed and shaped the burgers the night before. The second night we had steak, melon, and garlic bread (pre-made garlic bread from the grocery store). The leftover steak was so good with eggs the next morning for breakfast. The last evening we had beef bulgogi and rice, recipe adapted from Smitten Kitchen's Bulgogi Tacos in Smitten Kitchen Everyday. I cooked and mixed it up at home and warmed it up in a cast-iron skillet in camp. We spent our last day there kayaking so we were very tired and hungry when we got back to camp. It was so nice to have something I could just heat and eat. For lunches I made an antipasto pasta salad from Gimme Some Oven. I love how adaptable it is. It made an enormous amount. Next time I will cut the recipe in half. 

This trip reminded me to make everything as easy as possible for a camping trip. Buy the baby carrots, don't bring the carrots from the CSA no matter how beautiful they are. It sounds lazy but being able to grab a handful of carrots versus having to peel and chop them while dirtying a cutting board, knife and peeler in the process can make me choose to leave the carrots in the cooler. Easy wins the day!