Cabin - Food and Cooking

Smoked turkey tostadas/nachos.

I've been remiss in posting again.  Things have just been too hectic and something had to give.  In my case it has been working on my crafting and blogging.  I do have some crafts that are coming along and I will be blogging about them soon.  In the mean time, I wanted to put up another post about life at the cabin.  It is about cooking at the cabin.  A vacation is not really a vacation if you spend a lot of time cooking. Over the years I have tried various strategies to provide nutritious, flavorful meals while at the cabin.  Perhaps readers will profit from those experiences.  This might take a couple of blog posts to cover thoroughly.  I don't want to try to cram it all in one post. 

We have electricity at our cabin, which is fortunate because it gives us more options for cooking.  I do not have a regular stove there.  I have a wood fired cook stove.  It is wonderful in cold weather because we can heat the house and also put on a savory stew that can sit on the furthest metal plate on the stove and cook all day.  The problem with cooking up there comes in when the weather starts to warm up.  When the cast iron stove heats up, it stays warm for a long time.  By the afternoon, the heat can roast you right out of the cabin.  I can still cook, using an electric frying pan, our Coleman stove, microwave, toaster oven, roaster oven, or grill.  However, the cooking situation is less than ideal.  The Coleman stove has to be used out on the porch due to problems with carbon monoxide.  Also, it leaves a black residue on the bottom of your pots.  When you set the pot down it gets black soot all over everything and it is really hard to clean off.  The toaster oven and microwave are small and are usually used for heating things rather than cooking things from scratch.  The roaster oven works okay, but it functions best when you can cook long and slow.   The grill is great as long as it is not raining.  With those options, plus all the cooking time, it is necessary to find some way to balance what I can cook with all the other factors of making food.  I guess the good news is that once we upgraded the electricity we can operate the toaster oven and the microwave at the same time.  That greatly sped up meal production.

Meal planning goes beyond just having a menu for us.  I also have to plan for such contingencies as being invited to a pot luck with our friends or spontaneously inviting someone over for dinner.  My menus need to be able to scale up or turn into something I can take along if necessary.  I really don't have the option of running to a store if I need something.   If I need something that I could buy at a convenience store, it is a trip of about 45 minutes each way.  If it is an ingredient that could only be purchased at a grocery store, the trip is about an hour and a half each way.  Usually, unless it is something really critical, if we ran out or did not bring it we do without it.  Menu planning is essential.  When I make my list for what to pack for the trip it not only includes what meal for what day, but every single ingredient that goes into that meal.  I find that if I do not do this, I always leave something out.  Then that meal turns into whatever else I can make with those ingredients that are available.  Sometimes "chef surprise" turns out well, sometimes not.

Packing the food is another issue.  We have a finite amount of space available in our vehicle.  Since we have been working for ages on repairing and upgrading this cabin, we are also packing building materials, a compressor, and tools.  If we are going up for several days, have to make sure what I am preparing can fit into a couple of coolers.  I try to plan foods so that leftovers from one meal can be integrated into another meal.  It just adds another layer of complexity to menu planning.

An example of blending one menu into another would be smoked chicken.   I told my husband that I was planning on bringing up chicken breasts to smoke on the grill.  I freeze the chicken for transport and thaw it in the refrigerator.  When they are ready we smoke them.  I had to laugh on our last trip to the cabin.  The chicken breasts were so large that we almost could not fit all of them on the grill.  My husband said, "When you said you were bringing chicken breasts, I thought you meant you were bringing two of them."  Well, here's a hint, if you are going to spend forty-five minutes watching a grill, cook more than two at a time.  You can freeze them after they are cooked or turn them into other meals a day or two later.  The first night we had smoked chicken, sweet potatoes (cooked in the microwave) and some asparagus.  Lunch the next day was a toasted, buttered English Muffin with a fried egg, asparagus, and some bacon.  For dinner the next night we added some of the smoked chicken to a meal we generally call "turkey tostadas" (more on that in a minute) and we had plans for a meal later in the week for corn cakes with barbecue chicken and coleslaw.  So for about an hour of cooking I had three meals worth of the food that took the longest to cook.  The other meals are also very quick and easy to make, which is also a  big help.

We usually make the turkey toastadas  (Recipe below.) with smoked turkey.  In fact, I had brought some smoked turkey from home for a meal the night before I smoked the chicken.  We had almost enough left over for another meal.  By throwing in some of the smoked chicken, it became another meal.  The difference in flavor between turkey and chicken was different enough that it did not even seem like eating the same meal a second night.  Years ago, when we started making turkey toastadas, we actually made our own corn tortillas from Masa Harina.  Those days are long gone.  So are the days of purchasing and heating corn tortillas.  We like to maximize our time.  These days we use tortilla chips.  I use Mission brand because they are much lower sodium than some of the other brands.  So I guess the dish should now be called turkey nachos???  Anyway, the recipes for the turkey tostadas and corn meal cakes are below.  A single can of tomato sauce will work well for two people with a barely any leftover.  If you need to scale the recipe up for company or for leftovers, add more cans of tomato sauce (a can for every two people) and more cumin.  Add a little cumin at a time.  You will know when enough is enough.  I don't add a lot of salt to my food, so you might need to add some extra at the table.  Just remember that the tortilla chips also have salt on them.  Some ingredients need to be measured, but most of the ingredients are done to what looks right for the number of people.

The corn cakes are even easier.  (Recipe below)  Top your corn cakes with some smoked chicken mixed with enough bottled barbecue sauce to coat the chicken.   Place the barbecued chicken on top of the corn cakes.  Top the chicken with your favorite coleslaw recipe.  I usually make my coleslaw fresh, but many people would want to purchase coleslaw to make the meal even quicker.  Dinner is ready.    The meals are simple, but bring a lot of nutrition to the table as well as being tasty.

Between these meals, I served other meals just so that we would have a break from chicken.   These meals are also worthy of blogging about, but I will save them for the next post to keep this one from going too long. 

Turkey Tostadas:  1 - 8 oz. can (or more cans as needed), 1 onion chopped and divided, 1 or more cloves of  garlic (to your taste), salt about a quarter teaspoonful or more to taste, one-fourth teaspoon of cumin (scale up slowly if adding more tomato sauce), smoked turkey or chicken - enough for two people (add more as needed),  torn lettuce, chopped tomato, shredded cheese (chedder, monterey jack, pepper jack, or any taco blend of cheeses), sour cream, and salsa.

Fry three fourths of the onion.  Save some raw onion to top the nachos.  When the onions are translucent, add the garlic, cook thirty seconds, then add the tomato sauce, salt, and cumin.  Stir until well heated.  Add the smoked poultry.  Heat through. 

Put some tortilla chips on your plate.  Top with the smoked poultry/tomato mixture.  Top that with lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, sour cream and salsa.  Dinner is served.

Corn Cakes and Barbecue Chicken:  (This meal serves two with minimal leftovers.  Scale up as needed.)  1 box of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix.  1 egg, 2/3 cups of milk 2 T. butter-melted, 1 can of yellow corn-drained, 1 pint of coleslaw, smoked chicken for 2 people, barbecue sauce. 

Mix the muffin mix, egg, milk, butter, and drained corn.  Fry as you would a pancake.

Mix the smoked poultry and barbecue sauce to taste.

Put the corn cakes on a plate.  Top with the barbecue coated chicken.  Top all of that with coleslaw.  Dinner is served.

Check back for the next blog post on cabin cooking strategies.