Summer Summer Summertime Fun! (and a Seafood/BBQ Fest!)

My friend caught this snap of me casting a Kwik-Fish for salmon.

Hoo Boy! Where do you start when you had a 9-day camping vacation, get thrown back into work full-time, then have so many blogs to read and laundry and housework to do? I’m slowly catching up on my social networking. I don’t have much for a recipe, per se, rather than a compilation of photos and a few tidbits of what we ate and/or caught to eat at the river on the coast. We had so much fun that I can’t even describe it! I’ll let the photos help tell the story. Enjoy!

Taco Fixin’s ~ First things first! We had an easy meal of tacos our first full day camping.

My husband flipped the other half of our dock over that’s been sitting around upside-down for six years and extended our patio. Our dock is now a deck! (The other half is still serving as a dock in the river.) Here he is screwing in the last of the railings. It made our entertaining space so much bigger!

Finishing the Deck

It made a great place to store firewood for the weekend.

Firewood Storage Place

Between us and our neighbor friends who also traveled from our home town, we caught over 50 crawdads off our docks. It made for a grand feast along with ribs, oysters, and clams that were bought at the store!

Crawdads Caught Off Our Docks

Nom nom! Here we are enjoying fresh barbecued oysters!

Enjoying and Spicing up Fresh BBQ’d Oysters!

And these were just the appetizers!

Seafood Appetizers

Here we are enjoying the feast on our new deck!

Feast on the Deck

Here my husband is pointing out the final details of how to smoke some ribs for one of our meals.

Smoking Ribs with Some Stubb’s BBQ Sauce ~ Oh Yeah!

Of course we had to bring our lovable fur-kids with us to enjoy the life on the river!

Bohdi and Hannah Banana

Rocky and Friend

The evening of 4th of July we had cheese-stuffed cheeseburgers and hot dogs.  You have to have some burgers and dogs on 4th of July! Lip-smacking good!

Cheeseburger Fixin’s

Cheese-Stuffed Cheeseburger

Here is my friend “boasting” how he slayed the Dungeness Crab we caught out in the Siletz Bay for our final dinner. That’s some good eating!

Slaying the Dungeness Crab

I had to make a much-needed pit-stop during our 5-hour crabbing trip on the bay. It was a tad windy out there but we had a grand time!

On the Siletz Bay ~ Our boat needs a new coat of paint, ya’ think?

Black Cormorant and Seagull ~ Common Seabirds Seen on the Bay

Last, one of my friends helped my husband get my owl box permanently installed in a tree on our property. I’ll have to put up a “for rent” sign to get a barn owl family to move in and rid the property of the pesky moles and mice.

Barn Owl Box in Permanent Position

Cheers to great friends, cheap beer, seafood fests and barbecues, and a good old-fashioned 4th of July! 😀

Cheers!

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A Weekend of Fishing and Camp Food Recipes

A pole in the water is a good thing!

We got back on Monday from our last camping/fishing trip on the Siletz River at the coast in Oregon. It’s that sad time of year where we have to pull in the dock out of the water, pull up the ramp, and move the RV to higher ground. (The river usually floods in late fall or winter.) We made plenty of time for recreation, with a bunch of work in between. I also got to play with my new camera! The weather was astoundingly beautiful, and the sunsets were spectacular, and the reflections in the river during evening were so colorful with the fall foliage. I could not stop snapping photos!

But with all that recreating and working, we still have to eat. I brought along a bunch of pre-made frozen bags of food to make the cooking experience a bit less time consuming, as well as planned some other quick and easy fresh meals. As much as I loved taking nature pics with my camera, I took nary a photo of the food. We were usually so worn out by the end of the day I was just glad I had enough energy to cook and sit down to eat.

However, come along for the ride through my photos and links to some of the recipes for the food we ate!

First evening of fishing off the dock

The first night there we always do something quick and easy. Actually this entire trip we did that, though. We heated up some delicious (frozen) fish chowder made from the sea bass we caught the prior fishing trip. Can’t get any easier than that! Link to recipe below:

Creamy Fish Chowder with Corn and Potatoes

Cool full moon photo through the trees

It was also a full moon, which made the fishing (and crabbing) not that good. But I will not complain, since the weather was outstanding. Last year we pulled out in a full-force Pacific Northwest storm, which was not very pleasant. We were soaked to the bone after that. Sunny weather is a good thing for these activities.

Heading out on the Siletz River to fish and crab

There were a lot of boats on the river the next day!

Fishermen on the Siletz River

For the second night’s meal, I brought some frozen spaghetti sauce my husband makes in huge batches. Boil water for noodles, microwave sauce. Put some garlic bread in the toaster oven. Done! Unfortunately I’ve never posted his sauce recipe, but it’s really good though! He uses a spicy cayenne sausage one of our markets sells along with ground beef.

All our crab pots had lots of crab, but none of them were big enough to keep. What’s up with that??? First time we’ve ever been skunked on crabbing.

Pulling in crab pot of (too small to keep) Dungeness crabs

OK I just have to share you a picture of our dog, Hannah Banana. She just loves to roam around the property for squirrels and birdies!

Hannah Banana

Oh, I guess another recipe or two would be in order by now. For lunch one day I made my tuna melts with the very last of my fresh tomatoes from our garden. Another lunch we had Carne Asada tacos with some of the canned homemade fire-roasted salsa I made earlier last month. YUMM! Links to recipes below:

Tuna Melts

Carne Asada Tacos

Homemade Canned Fire-Roasted Tomato Salsa

The next morning I made some killer Migas Tacos with same salsa, but alas no recipe yet for that dish.

Next thing we knew, it was work, work, work, with fishing off the dock instead of river trips. But let me share a couple of sunset/river reflection photos. The colors were spectacular and the river was like glass. Amazing!

Trees reflecting off Siletz River

Trees Reflecting on Siletz River

The next night we did the standard grilled steak and baked potatoes. Oooh but we loaded our baked potatoes with lots of goodies and fresh veggies. Can’t go wrong with that either!

And check out this huge mushroom I found on our property! It had to be at least six inches across in diameter. Since I’m no mushroom expert, I just took a photo. For some reason mushroom poisoning scares the crap out of me.

Large Mushroom at Camp

Awww, here is our last night of fishing off the dock before pulling it in the next morning. Not sure why I always caught empty chairs. Well of course mine was empty, but hubby was probably off doing some kind of chore. But our poles were in!

Last evening of fishing off our dock

On our last night, we grilled up some frozen pre-marinated chicken fajitas. Of course we had our salsa with that too along with some fresh veggie fillings. Link to recipe below:

Chicken Fajitas

And last, here is our dock and ramp all pulled in for the winter. We took the opportunity to add two more barrels under the dock, as it listed pretty badly to one side because two of the barrels got crushed by logs last year.

Adding new barrels under the dock

Ramp pulled in and ready to tied down

Neither of us caught a salmon this year. That happens, those darn fish can be elusive and the full moon didn’t help. Well I hope you enjoyed my journey and some of the links to the recipes!

Diary of a Week of Camp Food

Shredded Spicy Chicken Tacos

I mentioned in my last blog that camp food doesn’t always have to consist of hot dogs, burgers, and chili. In between all the work we did out there (and of course relaxing) I kept some scribbled notes of what we cooked and/or ate last week. Aside from the plank-grilled salmon, we really didn’t eat that gourmet but I tried to mix things up enough with what I brought so that we weren’t eating the same stuff every day. And it certainly helps that we have a stove and convection/microwave oven in the RV! I’m sure the menu would have been quite different if I just had to rely on our trusty charcoal grill. We typically only ate two full meals a day out there. I had plenty of snacks on hand to eat in between meals.

Saturday Dinner
Grilled Beer Brats topped with Ranch Style Beans, chopped onion, and cheese
Potato Chips

Plank-Grilled Salmon Plated

Sunday Brunch
Spring Eggs (scrambled eggs with diced green onion, dice Roma tomato, real bacon bits and cheese)
Toasted English Muffins

Sunday Dinner
Plank-Grilled Salmon
Rice Pilaf
Green Salad

Monday Lunch
Tuna Melts
Potato Chips

Monday Dinner
Leftover Grilled Tri-Tip from our Friday dinner before we left
Baked Red Potatoes
Corn on the Cob

Tuesday Lunch
Lunch Buffet at Chinook Winds Casino!

Tuesday Dinner
Spaghetti made with hot Italian sausage, mushrooms, onions, lots of seasonings
Garlic Bread
Green Salad

Wednesday  Brunch
Bowl of Cheerios
Hard Boiled Eggs

Our Trusty Charcoal Grill

Wednesday Dinner
Grilled T-Bone Steak
Leftover Rice Pilaf
Corn on the Cob
Green Salad

Thursday Lunch
Leftover Spaghetti
Garlic Bread

Thursday Dinner
Shredded Spicy Chicken Tacos (Parboiled a chicken breast with a Serrano pepper, onion, garlic, lettuce and spices, then shredded and served on tortillas with tomato, lettuce, sweet onion, Southwest Corn Salsa, cheese, and sour cream

Friday Brunch
Can of Progresso Light Chicken Noodle Soup with the leftover spicy chicken and chicken broth added
Rice Cakes

Friday Dinner
1/4-lb. Grilled Burgers served on English Muffins
Potato Chips
Green Salad

Shredding the Chicken

And there you have it! We had an unmemorable lunch of boiled eggs, string cheese, and Goldfish crackers on the drive back because we didn’t feel like stopping on the drive home anywhere.  I had brought all the food in a cooler and a box, with the exception of the vegetables which we bought at a produce stand about an hour from camp.  The only time I had to drive to a grocery store was to get ice every few days for our beer/soda cooler since the RV fridge is too small to store many cans. And yes, most meals were eaten off paper plates. Hey, it’s camping!