Cooking

Cooking on the next level is a challenge out here on the road. I really want to make some cool desserts but scared to use the cast iron Dutch oven. I know I will burn a few items before I figure out the temperature of the coals. But for now, I have been doing great with a few of these meals I’ve challenged myself to make. This fried chicken came out great! Crispy and juicy and the mash potatoes were so on point. Key to good mash tatoes is garlic, lots and lots of garlic.

For the chicken, I did a batter mix of Almond flour, all-purpose flour and corn starch. Spiced the chicken with salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, garlic and basil, which I let the chicken marinate in for an hour in the fridge. I leave nothing out, it’s too hot and run the risk of it going bad sooner than you know it. Once nice and marinated, I dumped the chicken in an egg mixture of 2 eggs and some milk, buttermilk would have been great but worked with what I had. Then dumped in the batter, second bath of the egg mixture and another coat of batter and into the hot oil. Mash potatoes were peeled and boiled, salt and garlic powder added to the water. Once the right texture, I mashed and added salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, and lots of garlic butter. I melted half a stick of butter added garlic and basil and added all to the tatoes.

This was such a great comfort food meal. Not the best health wise but comforting for sure.

Let me know if you have any ideas on meals for on the road.

— Mush Love

What a treat this meal was! Easy to prepare and get ready. I added Blueberries, Strawberries, Oranges, Tomatoes, Romaine Lettuce, Feta and of course the Chicken. I squeezed an orange over the entire salad to give a more citrus flavor to everything. I cut into strips some skinless thighs, seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and oregano. Battered in Almond and Acorn Flower and fried in our cast iron. I think they would have been even crispier if I would have used eggs as a binder but I was out. Still they turned a beautiful golden brown and stayed juicy. Laid everything over the salad and it was great. I will experiment with other types of salads like this. This salad was great, nice crisp and cool on a extremely hot day. Oh yeah, we had a small side of Gorditas de Nopals from the day before, just added to the side of our plates. YUMMMMMMMM

Remember share with me some of the meals you like making on the road. Oh or even desserts.

–MUSH LOVE

This section is dedicated to some of our meals on the road that I find are easy and fit well into our budget, timeframe and somewhat of our healthy eating habits…still working on that. This time around we had dump nachos. Nachos are perfect for fight night and that was the plan for this meal. I had tomato based salsa, pico de gallo, avocado, and Greek yogurt for some chicken nachos. I prepared my pico while my chicken was boiling and the tomatoes and serrano peppers were roasting. I sliced up the avocado for the side of my plate, CJ does not care for avocado too much so I usually put on the side. Once my veggies were roasted, I added to our jet blender with garlic, half a small avocado, salt, pepper and white onions. This is not only a great salsa but I am using to cover our nachos instead of cheese. It really does work out well for a substitute!! Once the chicken is ready and shredded, I placed the chicken drizzled with the salsa, some Greek yogurt and avocado on the side. We add pico as much or little as we want on each bite. It was amazing and very easy to prepare and plate. Let me know if you have any ideas on meals we can try.

–MUSH LOVE

Full time RV cooking when you don’t have the right set-up takes more time, energy and patience. It’s been a little over a month since we have been out here and it’s getting a little easier for sure. And since I am doing this blog, I figured why not let everyone know how the cooking situations is going.

There has been good and bad….more good than bad. I have cooked with a campfire, I have cooked with a small table top BBQ pit. I have tried the small sterno burners. It’s all worked yes, but these have been more of a pain for me to deal with. Yes, we do have a stove in our camper, but we discovered very recently that the propane line is cut…so we can’t use it. Things that don’t work in our camper…another story to tell later. Back to what I was saying, I now have a 2 burner outdoor propane cooktop. Which has been a life saver! The down side is it is very windy out here, there for hard to regulate temperature and you constantly have to stay near the stove. But, this is way better than most of the other methods so far.

With all that said, I thought it be a good idea to share with you some of the meals that have and will work for us out here. I would like to start off with Chicken Taquitos, pictured above with the mountain of Greek yogurt. These were very good and did not take much time to prepare. I made the flour tortillas by hand while the chicken was boiling. I also made a salsa, which I believe may just take the place of our nacho cheese sauce. Topped everything off with lettuce, tomato, red onions, avocado, lemon and Greek yogurt. So with this meal, I used the water that I boiled the chicken in, to give to our fur babies with their food. I do not like waste and do not have a lot of refrigerator storage room so this was a definite treat for the babies. The salsa was made with grilled tomatoes, onions, garlic, pepper, grilled serrano peppers, lemon and half an avocado for a creamy texture. Which would be perfect for nacho if you can’t have cheese, or even if you just like to change things up.

Needless to say this was a great meal, didn’t take long to prepare and I used 2 pots/pans in the entire process and very little clean up. And the less clean up I have to do the happier I am.

Do you have any meals you think might work out here? Anything you’d like me to try? Want the recipe for my salsa? Send me an email at shellyrivera@coffeeanxietylove.com – Love to all