We’ve been a couple of weeks away from camping, for years.
Last year, we slept in the backyard to test the tent, the sleeping bags, and pads, and stayed properly indoors for the rest of summer.
The year before, we spent Memorial Day weekend testing the kampMATE firebox. It’s a simple contraption: five interlocking stainless steel plates that create a small wood cooktop.
On Friday, we learned that harnessing one of the four elements takes a learning curve! We’ve never cooked with fire before, so we wasted wood to boil water and scramble eggs.
My mother-in-law stepped in the next day. Unlike pampered Americans, she grew up cooking with coals. She danced between wood scraps and charcoal briquettes to build a proper fire. We stir-fried ground pork, added white beans, and stewed for an hour. We switched pots to cook rice. After the rice was cooked, we reheated the stew with cauliflower. It was a legitimate meal, but it took forever. We used 42 briquettes.
On Sunday, I started the fire using charcoal, paper, and dried leaves. We made a savory stew with stir-fried onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, and garbanzo beans. Surprisingly good; more surprising than good. The meal was supplemented with veggies and rice cooked in the house as the stew simmered for two hours. We used 20 briquettes.
We celebrated Memorial Day with an all-American chili. We filled the box with rocks to pushing the charcoal up to the pot. Unfortunately, the red beans were uncooperative and took hours to soften so it still took 20 briquettes.
We closed the long weekend buying a dutch oven from Home Depot. We planned one-pot meals by adding rice to the stews and watched outdoor bread baking videos.
The firebox spent the summer in the sun before moving permanently into the shed. (The dutch oven is a cast iron bread box on the kitchen island.)
Still, $25 was a cheap diversion for a long weekend.
I wonder when we’ll go camping, two weekends from whenever.