Author Archives: Propane Kitchen

Unknown's avatar

About Propane Kitchen

small-time adventures and life on the road

How to Make a Frozen Pizza

Posted on by
Reply
  1. Arrive in camp around 6pm. Agree to make a frozen pizza because it is hot and you are feeling lazy and vaguely cranky and just want to read.
  2. Guiltily think about all the fresh vegetables you’ve acquired over the past few days, and consider how long they’ll last.
  3. Decide to add a big salad to the dinner menu.
  4. Heat a pot of water to boil tiny red potatoes unearthed from your parent’s garden.
  5. When searching for herbs in the fridge, grumble a little when the mozzarella falls off the shelf. Set it on the counter and forget about it. Continue reading →

Yosemite & the Eastern Sierra

Posted on by
Reply

A full week of throbbing music, dust storms, midnight bike rides and art exploration at Burning Man made returning to the regular world feel a bit dull. So little neon, few enormous sculptures, no steam punk octopus cars shooting flames. The only obvious antidote to all that human-powered stimulation was to immerse ourselves again in the much more humbling beauty of nature. So, after a quick stop in Eagle Point to deep-clean the Minnie and a whirlwind tour through the Bay Area visiting friends, we set off to Yosemite and the majestic Eastern Sierra. Continue reading →

Dusting Off: Burning Man in Brief

Posted on by
Reply

We wake at four a.m. to the trill of the alarm and slowly drive out past the sleeping campers who shared our site the night before. In the dark, we bump down the forest service road, headlights throwing shadows into the pine trees. We ease onto the highway, hurried, excited; our destination is just a hundred miles away. The stars fade. Pink ribbons wind across the eastern horizon as morning breaks over the high desert. Usually a desolate stretch of road, we join a kind of caravan with old RVs, a heavily loaded U-Haul trailer and a white-painted school pus piled with a jumble of bikes.  We’re all going to Burning Man, the annual gathering in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada that defies description. It’s an enormous art project. A weeklong party. A celebration of human creativity, community and ingenuity. A dance. A memorial. A test of survival skills. Yes, all of that. Continue reading →

Kootenai River Brewing Company Preview

Posted on by
1

This post is part of Patrick’s “Beer & Gear” series.

Canada may be known for the Mackenzies and their beer drinking prowess but we didn’t fare so well up north in that department.  Six packs of Molsen and Labatt were running about $12, yikes! After a week in Canada without a proper pint I had a bit of the ol’ thirst.  Enter the little town of Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho.  Just after crossing the border we pulled into town and parked alongside the Kootenai River to make some lunch.  Afterwards, we hopped out of the Minnie to take a stroll around town.  Low and behold the first site we saw was a sign reading BEER in big bold letters.

Continue reading →

Blackberry Orange Cornmeal Muffins

Posted on by
3

A tangle of blackberry vines surrounding our campsite in Sunset Bay, Oregon, inspired these breakfast treats. Tangy orange zest and juicy blackberries are paired with hearty cornmeal in a moist, crumbly muffin.

Blackberry Orange Cornmeal Muffins

  • 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted and cooled
  • 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 Tbs fresh orange zest
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 Tbs orange juice
  • 1 cup blackberries, tossed in 1 Tbs flour

Preheat oven to 375° and line twelve muffin cups with liners.

Sift together flour and baking powder and whisk in cornmeal, sugar, salt and orange zest. Whisk together melted butter, milk, orange juice and eggs. Add wet ingredients to flour mixture and stir just until combined. Gently fold in blackberries. Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.  Bake for about 15 minutes, or until tops are golden and a tester comes out clean.

Waldo Lake, Oregon

Posted on by
3

High in the Willamette National Forest, Waldo Lake is tucked in a glacier-carved valley amidst pine trees and huckleberries. Revered among Oregon canoers and kayakers, Waldo is one of the clearest lakes in the world; it has no permanent inlets beyond snowmelt and lacks the nutrients needed for significant plant growth. Visibility here reaches depths of up to 150 feet, occasionally an eerie phenomena, such as when you glimpse watery shadows of your canoe on the lake floor far below, or see stumps of trees, ghost-like and covered in silt, deep in the water.

Continue reading →

Watermelon Salad

Posted on by
2

Food is always my top priority when travelling (actually, it’s always a top priority). What are we going to eat? Is anyone hungry? Do we have enough food? When are we stopping for lunch/snacks/dinner/ice cream? Was that a bakery? Especially while on vacation, meals mark the passing of time, and fill the hours usually devoted to office work or emails.

Our meals so far have been simple but satisfying, as our rigorous schedule of sightseeing and hiking leaves little time for food preparation. It’s a rough life. We’ve focused on dishes that can be made quickly, trying to match our foods to the weather outside – which is to say, hearty pastas when it’s chilly, and big salads when it’s roasting, like this weekend when temperatures soared into the 90s.

More a list of suggested ingredients than a real “recipe,” this easy Watermelon Salad is a refreshing accompaniment to BBQ & corn on the cob.

Watermelon Salad

  • 3 cups cubed watermelon
  • 1 cup cubed jicama
  • 2 large cucumbers, peeled, seeded and diced
  • juice & zest of two limes
  • 2 Tbs fresh chopped mint
  • 2 Tbs fresh chopped basil
  • ½ cup crumbled feta
  • salt & pepper, to taste

Toss all ingredients in a large bowl. Cover and chill up to one hour before serving.

A Month by the Numbers

Posted on by
7

The 12th marked our first full month out on the road, but we’ve been canoeing on a remote lake and couldn’t document the occasion here.  Some quick statistics from our trip so far:

3,826 – miles driven by Patrick

107 – miles driven by Aimee

113 – miles hiked

5 – states

2 – Canadian provinces

6 – National Parks/Monuments

1,709 – photos taken

5,000 (approx.) – times Aimee has exclaimed, “look at that!”

1 – bottle of wine shattered when the refrigerator popped open on a curve

1 – glass bottle of sticky limeade shattered when the fridge popped open

21 – curses uttered while cleaning up the above

83 – meals made in the Minnie

11 – meals eaten out

1 – parking ticket

22 – nights camped for free

1 – harmonica received from fellow travelers met on the road

4 – old college friends hugged

3 – former colleagues visited

0 – regrets

Cape Perpetua

One Reason I Choose Organic

Posted on by
1

The sharp scent alerted us to onion fields before we could see them. The green tops poked up from neat hummocks that ran beside the road for nearly a mile. Along the highways crops were laid out like quilt squares, potatoes and alfalfa and onions and beets all stitched together with dirt roads. Very pastoral and lovely. Then we paused to watch as a small plane swooped low over a cornfield, and sprayed out a thick mist of pesticide. A bit farther down the road, we came across this sign:

Think I’ll take my veggies without the synthetic chemicals.

Luxury & Extravagance

Posted on by
4

It’s been an indulgent week at Propane Kitchen. Not only did we tour Grand Coulee Dam, hike to a lake still dotted with ice, listen to accordion music played by a man wearing animal fur and marvel at Mt. Rainier & Mt. St Helens, we also stayed with Patrick’s friends and work colleagues, enabling us to take real showers multiple days in a row. I can’t stress enough what a treat that is.

Plus, thanks to a snafu with some reservations months ago, we stayed at the posh Hotel Monaco for free last night, and I’m writing this from a giant-sized bed while Patrick is out getting bagels. Continue reading →