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!

Spicy Skillet Corn with Tomatoes

Spicy Skillet Corn with Tomatoes

This corn dish is a bright and tasty accompaniment to any barbecue, and was served Labor Day with huge slabs of baby back ribs my mom grilled and cooked. I had my parents and uncle from out of town over for the holiday, and the entire meal was cooked by all. I did the corn and cole slaw, my mom did the ribs, and my husband whipped up a huge batch of his potato salad. Even my daughter pitched in and made chocolate-covered banana slices for dessert. My father and uncle pitched in by helping us to eat this huge quantity of food.

The original recipe didn’t have tomatoes, but with my cherry tomato plants exploding with ripe red balls of sweetness, it was a no-brainer for me to chop some up and add them in. I used some delicious fresh white sweet corn on the cob, and the spiciness of the chiles combined with the tartness of the lime and the sweetness of the corn and tomato made this side dish shine! I hope you think so too.

Spicy Skillet Corn with Tomatoes

Adapted from Southwest Corn Skillet with Chili and Lime from Barefeet in the Kitchen

1 tablespoon butter
4 ears of fresh sweet corn, kernels removed from the cob
Lots of ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon Hungarian sweet paprika
1/4 teaspoon New Mexico red chile powder
3 strips of bacon, torn into bite-sized pieces
1 cup of cherry tomatoes, quartered
Juice of 1/2 lime

Heat a large skillet over medium heat and melt the butter. Add the rest of the ingredients except the tomatoes and lime juice and stir to heat through, about five minutes. Add the tomatoes and lime juice and toss to combine. Remove from skillet and serve immediately with your meal. Easy and delicious!

Note: You can omit the bacon if you want. But hey, we had bacon left from the potato salad my husband made, so….what the heck.

Spicy Skillet Corn with Tomatoes

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!