Spring Break Thursday – lots of food, walks, solar cooking too
Thursday morning we took Missy (our Shepherd), for a nice, long walk. There are a lot of amenities available at Santee Lakes, but walking Missy was the one we were interested in exploiting. They have a huge dog-walk all around most of the North end of Santee Lakes and over the years we have logged some pretty good miles on it. A lot more than Missy has, she is only six.
Of course, we just *had* to come back to the trailer in time to prepare brunch/lunch!
We just *had* to cook off the rest of that ham and the other half of that big bag of hash-browns right?
Heidi certainly thought it was a good idea. (Note – prepared mustard for me this time, it was what was on the table). 😉
OK – following Japatul Phil, WA6FFT, recipe for apple cobbler in a pyrex bowl he bought for us especially for our Sun Oven. 1 cup (8 oz) of yellow cake mix – 2 eggs – 2 oz. water – 2 oz. oil. A can of apple pie filling, about twice as much cinnamon as you think you should use, then finally coat the top with a layer of honey.
Since I like cinnamon – twice as much as I think I want is sure a LOAD of cinnamon. 😉 Not following convention, I put a little over half of the cake mix in the bottom, lay down the apple pie filling, then the cinnamon. Then poured the rest of the batter over this and kind of “mooshed” everything down before adding the “honey frosting”.
Now lest see about the All American Sun Oven.
One of my self-learned lessons about the AASO is glass slips around on the leveling tray – putting down a silicon baking mat stops all that.
First, I lay down a silicon pad on the leveling tray to keep the glass from sliding around. You will note I haven’t pre-heated it before doing so – didn’t want to burn my fingers.
Much later, I notice the left side of the leveling tray was not really over the suspension bolt – go figure. (Worked like a champ non-the-less).
It really was a gorgeous solar day at Santee Lakes…
The silicon mat is doing its job, the pyrex is perfect size, the honey is going to provide an excellent crust on top – life is good! Temperature is very rapidly coming up. (It went to just above 340).
The last time I went out to adjust the sun oven, the temperature was over 340 degrees F and it sure looked done to me, having cooked for an hour (more or less).
Brought it inside and Heidi had a fit over how good it smelled. We are letting it rest a bit, and that part is more difficult than baking it.
I cut a slice out for Heidi, then a little thinner piece for myself and it was GOOD! This recipe seriously needs to be served warm with ice cream or whipped cream in future. It would also be wonderful in the morning with coffee. Fortunately, the Pyrex dish Phil gave us comes with a lid and the recipe doesn’t rise so high you can’t use that lid. Very nice.
Thanks Phil until you are better paid!
Later on that Thursday, we started breaking down camp a bit early, (primarily the outdoor kitchen setup, chairs and such). That saved us a good hour on Friday morning and we were able to take our time actually breaking camp on Friday morning.
Final lesson learned – Dave – follow your checklists for setting up and breaking camp. (Blush!)