Non-grill Owners

Greg and I do not own a grill. This is made utterly apparent on Memorial Day, especially driving home through the community with the windows down. Last year we spent our entire tax return on having a brand new fence and patio built in our back yard. Now our yard is almost complete, save some patchy grass and the empty space at the edge of the patio. The grill is the one thing we have still neglected to buy.  All we've got is a small George Foreman, but that's kept in the kitchen, as you might expect. It does the job, but apparently it is horrible to clean. (One nice thing about cooking at my house is that whoever cooks doesn't have to do dishes or clean Foreman Grills).

Luckily, we went camping this weekend with Andy and Karissa and were able to get a little dose of the smoky grilled goodness. We cooked hot dogs over the fire and made s'mores.

We also cooked dinners every night  in our new dutch oven.

The first night we got there, it was threatning rain, but we threw a fire together anyways. We put some ground beef, carrots, and scalloped potatoes into the dutch oven, placed it next to the fire and let it cook for a bit while we put the tent together and unrolled our sleeping bags. All of the sudden and all at once, a vicious wind picked up and it got completely dark an ominous. We could hear thunder quickly getting closer and closer. We quickly grabbed the food off the fire and practically dove one by one into the tent, not a moment too soon! A thunder storm rolled over us for the next 10-15 minutes. Here we are safe and sound inside the tent with our perfectly cooked dinner. 

The next day all I could think about was sitting by the fire with  nice bottle of wine. Unfortunately, I forgot a corkscrew. I finally gave up on the pocket knife from Walmart, which I was sure was going to snap in half and stick in my eyeball. So I got creative. Here I am trying to get into a bottle of Pino Noir with a hot dog skewer and a hatchet. It finally worked!

Thanks for reading my thoughts about campfires and cookouts!