Mar. 10 & 11, Thurs & Fri. Cooking!

The internet is running ridiculously slow, and it's taking forever for pictures to upload. We've been here a few hours, and the handful of pictures below are all I've gotten up.

We'll come back another day. There's just too many other people using the internet, which is a normal problem on a Saturday at the library.

Grrrr. I miss having 24/7 internet like we do at home.

"Hey, Odie? Yeah, you, dog! Is this your water bucket?"

"Nyah, nyah, look at it now! It has CAT germs!"


I soaked a variety of dehydrated foods.
The blue cup in back has strawberry slices, dried from the ones we picked in our garden.
The white cup, front left, has apple slices that we put in our oatmeal after I took this picture.
The blue cup in front as tomatoes, onions, peppers, and olives. All but the olives were from our garden, and I used them on homemade pizza later this afternoon.


Then I made bread. The bowl has the water and yeast in it. Behind the bowl, left to right, is the bag of yeast, the flour bucket behind it, the salt shaker, brown sugar, and powdered milk.

I kneaded the dough right in the bowl, folding and smushing it, then greased the same bowl for raising it. I set the mixing bowl inside the glass bowl and lid from the solar cooker and set the whole thing in the sun. It kept it at a wonderfully warm temperature. I didn't use the reflector with it. That would have cooked the dough.

The dough is risen and ready to be put in the pans.

After baking.

We had some warm, fresh bread with real butter (home-canned butter brought from home).

The finished pizzas.

I made them in pie pans so they'd fit in the little campoven.

I had half a jar of cream cheese and no refrigerator or ice.

I made a "swamp cooler" with a wet washrag.

I set it on an upside-down pan lid so as the water seeped down it would collect in the pan lid and be "wicked" back up the wash cloth. That way it wouldn't dry out as fast.

Then I set it in the shade.

The way it works is that the wet cloth becomes colder as the air hits it.

This mostly works in dry climates.

I laid a small thermometer next to it and it read 62 degrees. Then I put the

thermometer under the cloth on top of the jar. Ten minutes later the thermometer

read 50 degrees. So it really does work.
That's cold enough to keep cheese for a couple days.

There were supposed to be more pictures before this one, but the uploading thing was a pain.

Steven dug a pit and lined it with rocks for the dutch oven. Then we brought up a bunch of driftwood from the lakeshore. The next morning Steven started a fire in the pit. When it burned down to coals we set the kettle in there. Inside the kettle were pinto beans (soaked overnight), onions, bacon, and topped with biscuits/dumplings.

Then he shoveled more hot coals over the top of the kettle and filled it over with sand.

While it cooked we went on a kayak trip over to Echo Bay marina, a round trip of almost 10 miles. Got that? 10 miles.

Now, imagine some place 10 miles from your home and think about propelling yourself there with only your arms! :)

Or if you'd rather, think of something 5 miles from your house and imagine going there and back! For those who live in by us in Montana, that's like paddling from the interbel building at the foot of our road, to the highway, maybe a tad farther!

When we got back we dug up the kettle. The beans were almost-but-not-quite done, so we built a fire in the campfire ring and finished it there.

It was delicious!

Odie was glad to have us back! She went back and forth between us for petting!

I'm sure this is getting to be a familiar sight!

You can see in the foreground that spring is here and things are getting green!

The cat tries to recharge it's energy!

Well, the rest of the pictures will be up next time we come.

We're thinking we're about ready for a change of scenery, having done all the things we wanted to do within reach of our current campsite, so we'll be moving to another place within this area, somewhere, in the next few days.