Welcome to day camp - it's either a place for you to get inspired and want to make stuff, or a place where I can show off the cute things I've made since my family is tired of my texting them pictures every day! Just like camp I do all kinds of fun projects - crafts, DIY, bake, cook, garden and more - and can't wait to share them with anyone looking for ideas.
Every time Al makes these beans I remember how much I love them and ask for the recipe! They are SO good. He actually gave me the recipe a while ago but I completely forgot about it until looking thru my folder of recipes the other day looking for something to take to my sisters for a cookout. I have a recipe book that all of my tried/true/standby/loved recipes are in, and I also keep a manilla folder full of ripped out magazine recipes, etc. for ideas I'd like to try (if it makes the cut and I know we'll want it again then I move it into my recipe book) - not sure why Al's recipe isn't in the book because I know it's a keeper and will now make them often!
I asked him the other day if it's ok with him for me to share the recipe - he said "it isn't a secret family recipe or anything" (which made me laugh cuz it's basically doctored up Bush's baked beans - I think their commercial is that Bush's is a secret family recipe? Maybe? Now I'm questioning that...whatever...I still laughed at him).
not the "prettiest" picture, but here they
are in the crock pot using a liner which
helps so much with cleanup!
Ingredients:
55 oz Bush's "original" baked beans
1/2 lb bacon, diced and browned
1/2 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced green pepper
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
1/4 cup brown sugar
Al's Notes:
"all ingredients above with the exception of the beans are estimates. I don't measure any more. All can be adjusted to taste. If you want to reduce calories you can reduce the amount of bacon grease you add to the beans - I wouldn't eliminate it all though, it does add a lot of flavor."
My Notes:
I made these in a crock pot (started on high heat for a couple hours, then reduce to low heat until ready to serve. I ended up cooking for approx 6 hours and they were delicious!) so we didn't have to heat up the oven and help keep the kitchen cool - side note, I use a crock pot liner when I can and in this case it was such a help not having to scrub the baked on beans! Whoever came up with crock pot liners is a genius. Just sayin...
While roaming Prague we walked by a little bar that had a porch, and on the porch were gliders with a table hooked between them - so you're rocking back and forth while drinking and eating. It was so cute that we totally had to sit out there, never considering if rocking back and forth while drinking and eating is a good idea...
...after a few minutes of rocking, swaying back and forth, we realized that eating would not be a wise choice - so we just had a drink. It was the middle of the day and nothing really sounded good to me, but then I saw a "harvey wallbanger" on the menu and decided I needed to try one. I've heard of it but didn't know what was in it, but I ordered it anyway - I thought it was going to be a manly cocktail in a short glass, but it came out in a tall pina colada glass with fruit sticking out. Does "harvey wallbanger" make you think of a fruity foofoo drink? It sounds manly to me haha. Anyway, I don't love fruity foofoo drinks and won't be putting this into the "drinks I order often" category - but it was fine and we were rocking, that's good enough.
And I bet I'll always remember where I had my first harvey wallbanger - in Prague, sitting in a glider on the porch of a bar.
I found a recipe here if you want to try one - it's just vodka, oj, and Galliano.
Brooke wanted to make a tie blanket so I offered to take her to the fabric store to get the material - I warned her that it was going to be difficult to pick 2 patterns out of the hundreds the store carries and I gave us plenty of time knowing how long this was going to take...after her initial shock (seriously, have you seen how many different fleece patterns there are now?) and excitement she actually picked out 2 coordinating ones fairly quickly - and she picked pretty classy and simple ones, I figured she'd go for the crazy tie-dye or wild patterns!
At the cutting counter the lady helped her figure how big she wanted her blanket and she decided that 2 yards of each fabric would be big enough to cover her up and she'll be able to fold it on the end of her bed when she isn't using it.
At home I put the 2 fabrics together and trimmed off the salvage edges and squared them up to be exactly the same size. Then she did the rest. Using a 6" square of cardboard as a guide she cut out a 6" square of fabric from each of the 4 corners, that notch lets you be able to tie the edges of the corners together. She didn't have time to keep working on it at my house so I described how she needed to cut 6" fringe about 1" wide all the way around (cut thru both layers at the same time, that way the fringe is the same size and in the same place when you tie it), then tie the whole thing together.
She left my house with only the four corners cut out, I told her this is sort of a time consuming project and to just work on it a little at a time (it isn't hard, just takes time) - well 3 hours later I got a text that she had finished it and she sent pictures. And she says no one helped her - I've never finished one that fast! So I was wrong about how long it would take her to choose patterns and wrong about her being able to finish it so quickly - good for her!
My niece is moving soon and planning how she wants to decorate her new house - she's been sending me tons of Pinterest ideas of things she'd like us to make together but now time is running out before she goes so I thought I'd make this for her as a surprise. I'm feeling a little guilty about how easy and quick this came together, not really very creative of me haha - but she likes it and it turned out really cute so I'll share it with you :)
All I did was type out the words I wanted, played with fonts, colors and sizes, then printed it out onto white cardstock. Using a standard hole punch, I punched out some gold dots from paper I had left over from making decorations for Paige's graduation station (click here for that post) and glued them on using glue dots. Do you have glue dots? If not you should try them, they are super handy and worked really good on this project. You could also freehand write your words, or use stencils or alphabet stickers, and glue on the dots using plain old elmers if that's what you want - I really took the easy shortcut way by printing from my computer and using the glue dots. This whole project took maybe 15 minutes, and it took that long because I couldn't decide on which font I wanted! Put the completed paper in a cute frame and you're done.
I played around with adding glitter or paint to the gold "good day" but decided it didn't need it.
I stuck the gold punched out dots right onto the glue dots, then peeled them off and stuck to my paper.
I didn't think to measure the frame opening and the paper to see if they were the
same size, so I had to trim the paper to fit. Fortunately I had left enough
space all around the edges that it wasn't a problem to trim a little off.
Quick easy travel tip for packing medications or other things that are on cards in boxes or blister packs to save room but still know what they are - Cathy takes them out of their boxes and makes a label for the back of each card or package of pills with the instructions. So smart! I do something similar but not nearly as neat and organized, I just write on the back of mine with a sharpie. I do love my label maker though and will start doing this in the future!
The family came over last night for Sunday Supper - and since we just got back from the river cruise and I've been talking so much about all the delicious food I wanted to experiment on them :)
I made stroganoff over rice like we had in Prague - googled a bunch of recipes and thought I'd found one that seemed similar but turned out it wasn't nearly as good as it should have been...so I'm not even sharing that recipe and will keep working on it. For dessert I made the apple strudel recipe that I posted about here, it also wasn't as good as it was at the demo where I watched them make it (Dave actually asked "did you follow the recipe they gave you on the ship?" like I used a completely different recipe haha! Yes, I followed exactly!) but only Dave and I knew it wasn't like the kind we had in Europe - everyone else at dinner enjoyed it so I decided to go ahead and post this anyway. It tastes really good, but I'm calling it a "fail" because it is not what we had while on vacation, since everyone else gave it a thumbs up I want you to make it and decide for yourself.
I haven't made very many videos - it's much harder to talk and work at the same time. Brooke makes it look so easy! But here I am making the strudel:
A couple changes I would suggest: it needs more sugar in the filling. Maybe when I figured out how much brown sugar I needed by weighing it versus the recipe calling for 1 3/4 oz I did the calculation wrong? Whatever, add a little more than 1/4 cup for sure. The dough seemed a little tough to me, maybe I didn't roll it out thin enough - get it super thin. I think it would also be nice to sprinkle with cinnamon sugar before baking, the top of the crust was a little dry.
I just made a copy of the actual recipe when I posted it before, it's in metric and ounces so I weighed everything to help make it easier for you to make this - hopefully I calculated it all correctly! I'm retyping it again with my amounts:
Ingredients
dough:
12 1/4 oz flour (about 2 3/4 cup)
1 T. oil
1 T. melted butter
3 1/2 oz (100ml) lukewarm water (I used a glass measuring cup that has ml's on the side to measure)
pinch of salt
filling:
1 1/4 lb tart apples, peeled cored and sliced (about 5 or 6 apples, I used granny smith)
3 1/2 oz melted butter (one stick)
3 1/2 oz biscuit breadcrumbs (I used graham cracker crumbs, just shy of 1 cup)
1 3/4 oz light brown sugar (1/4 cup packed)
raisins, cinnamon, chopped nuts, lemon juice, rum (all optional)
Directions:
Peel apples and cut into thin slices. Gently brown the biscuit crumbs in butter. Combine all ingredients for the filling together.
Mix flour, salt, oil and lukewarm water and knead together with the kneading hook on the mixer for approx. 10 minutes until the dough as become smooth and elastic. Roll the dough into a ball and brush with butter. Using a sharp knife, cut a cross at the top of the ball of dough and then leave to rest at room temp for 2 hours, wrapped in cling film.
Sprinkle a table cloth evenly with flour. Roll the dough out as thinly as possible on the cloth. Place your hands, stretched out flat, under the dough and draw the dough over the back of your hand so that it becomes thinner and thinner. You will know the dough is ready when the pattern on the table cloth is recognizable through the dough, or when you can ready newspaper print through it.
Fill and roll the strudel together, being sure to use the table cloth to help you, by raising the end with the filled dough just enough that the strudel begins to roll on its own accord. Grease the apple strudel with melted butter and bake in preheated oven at 400' for 30 minutes, or until golden brown.
Makes 6 servings
resting dough
I can read my note thru the dough so I thought it was thin enough,
after baking it though I think it needed to be rolled out even more.
When the river cruise finished in Nuremberg we had a 3 day extension in Prague - hey, we came this far, why not? It took about 4 hours to get there by bus, and I have to say it wasn't a bad trip at all. The countryside is very pretty (also we left really early in the morning so the first part of the trip everyone is taking a nap!) and for part of the drive we were on the German Autobahn - most of the Autobahn doesn't have a speed limit so people are driving super super fast, fortunately the bus couldn't go super super fast so I didn't have to worry about that haha. How fun it would be to drive as fast as you can go and not worry about getting a ticket! We made one stop at a McDonalds - as you can imagine it was very different than our Micky D's, you could get pastries and donuts! Nice. And the sign out front said they had a "relax room" instead of a restroom - I laughed.
Old Town Hall and Astronomical Clock
in Old Town Square. It's a busy place!
Petrin Tower - a mini Eiffel tower on a hill
about 30 minutes walk outside of town
view from the Charles Bridge
Prague is a beautiful city - have I said any place isn't beautiful on this trip? It's filled with things to do and see, it's safe, and very walkable (still got the cobblestones tho, flat shoes people!). The Old Town Square was close to our hotel so we used that as sort of a base, the roads leading away from the square were filled with shops, cafes, fabulous architecture...limitless! I really can't even list everything we did - I'll just show you lots of pictures - there's the Charles Bridge, the Astronomical Clock, the Old Town Hall which looks like something out of Disneyland, the Prague Castle, the Petrin Tower (which looks like the eiffel tower, I have no idea why they have a mini eiffel tower...), churches churches and churches of course - although our guide said that 80% of czechs claim to be atheists, not that they don't believe but they won't belong to any groups, church, etc. after living with Communism for so long. They don't want to follow anything or be told what to do. Interesting right?
Czech Crowns - the coins
are confusing! It was shocking to
get a bill for 1162,00 but then
realize that's like $40.
locks on the bridge to symbolize a couple's
love - you put on the lock and throw the key
into the river. The guide goes "look, a couple
have combination locks instead of a key,
that's the Czech way - keep your options open"
HA!
changing of the guards at the castle requires a selfie for sure.
these statues are called "creepy babies". yep, they are.
just a man and his girlfriend. I'm thinking
he lost a bet? I'm hoping he lost a bet...
on the bridge there is a statue, people
line up to rub one side or the other - left side
means you'll return to Prague one day, right
side is for luck - we touched both sides.
the John Lennon wall - full of ever changing
graffiti and personal statements. pretty cool.
Keeping up with our vacation eating schedule we pigged out all around Prague! Once again, the food is SO good. I had a couple of my favorite meals here, I'm including a bunch of food pictures for you. Food is inexpensive, wine and beer are great, people are not exactly friendly and outgoing but they are pleasant and all of our servers were nice. I'm going to work on recreating some of the dishes we experienced and if they turn out I'll share them with you in future posts. One I especially want to try is "stroganoff goulash" which was sort of a beef and mushroom gravy over rice, the really interesting thing is it has chopped up pickles in it - weird but so so good.
Trying the Trdelnik - a coiled cinnamon bread thing either filled with ice cream (which none of us liked)...
...or just eat plain, everyone liked it plain best.
another goulash - this one quite a bit spicier served with crunchy potato pancakes and bread dumplings.
not my favorite thing but it's pretty, and very filling!
cauliflower pancakes and smashed potatoes. I loved this dish.
check out how my chicken and veggie skewer was presented - how great is this presentation?!
one of my most favorite meals - "stroganoff goulash". This is so so so good,
I will be trying to perfect this recipe for sure.
it's not all about goulash and dumplings - there's fantastic ice cream too!
We hired a driver/guide to take us about an hour out of town to Kutna Hora, there are a couple beautiful churches there and also a small chapel decorated with human bones! Yep that was creepy and I could have done with out, but the guide said "hey, you gotta see it once but you won't go a second time" haha. Look it up if you want to see pics and read about it.
on the sidewalk outside of the bone church -
it's just inlaid stones so not as creepy as the
actual chapel!!
That's the end of our vacation and my travel log for the river cruise and Prague - hope you enjoyed! I highly recommend this trip if you can make it - if not, at least you've got a feeling of what our days looked like and how beautiful these cities are.
I hope you guys aren't sick of my travel posts yet but this is a great way for me to remember what all we did (since I took my travel journal with me but didn't write in it once!) - if you're bored just give me a couple more days and I'll get back to making stuff to share with you :)
Palace of Justice
original old medieval city walls
The river cruise portion of the trip ended today in Nuremberg, Germany. There is so so much history to see and visit here - in addition to the Palace of Justice (with a prison attached) where they held the Nuremberg Trials (putting the Nazi war criminals on trial), the Nazi Party rally grounds, the massive Congress Hall (built to look like the Roman Colosseum), and the Imperial Palace, there's also tons of sculptures, toy stores, crafts, watchtowers, beautiful buildings and flowers, stores, outdoor markets...endless. Half of us did the Nuremberg City Tour and the other half went on an optional tour that focused on World War 11 and the Nazi Regime - I did the City Tour which touched on everything and Dave did the WW2 tour and we were both happy with our day and the guides. The city tour had a bit of riding in the bus but sometimes that's the only way to see everything - after touring around by bus we did quite a bit of walking around town which was great. Word of caution if anyone goes on this trip or visits these beautiful old world cities - wear comfie flat shoes! The cobblestones will get ya...just sayin... I trip walking on regular ol' sidewalks so you can imagine how graceful I was on the cobblestones haha!
Congress Hall
tower at the Nuremberg Castle - when the castle
was attacked the princess or queen (maybe all
the women? all the royal women? good grief I should
pay more attention) went into the tower thru a small
opening in the middle - you can make out a spot in
the center where the bricks are different, that's where
the opening was for them to enter then the bricks
would be put back in place to protect them.
they stayed in there until the castle was back
under control.
After our city tour we had free time to explore the city on our own - I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing but there really isn't much "free time" on this trip if you choose to do one of the tours. This is a bad thing if you want to shop or eat your way around the cities, but it's a good thing if you're my husband who kept asking how I planned to get all my new treasures home...;)
couldn't pass by this gorgeous produce stand - look at these beautiful tomatoes!
Al, Cathy and I did a little shopping - the highlight for me was the Lebkuchen store, I did go a little crazy in there. Lebkuchen is like gingerbread and the store we found was full of all different kinds, shapes, sizes, tins, packages...how to choose? I love gingerbread (and pfeffernusse - a spiced cookie... and spekulatius which reminds me of those Archway windmill cookies my mom used to buy - see why I went crazy, so many things I love in this store!). Click here to see the store we went in - beware, they have online ordering! After shopping we were starving (not! I was so full this entire trip from all the great food but did that stop me? nope) so decided to have a "snack" of sausages, potato salad, bread, and wine before getting back on the ship!
here's something we learned - the restaurants all put a basket of rolls, breads, and pretzels
on your table and then at the end of the meal ask how many you ate! Here in the US we
just pig out on all the bread basket goodies and usually ask for more without thinking twice -
there you pay for how many you eat. And if you want butter that's extra too - good to know!
last night on board - had to have dance floor selfies with our new friends :)
This is Rad - barkeeper/dancer extraordinaire :). He kept making fun of me
for ordering my drinks with "a bunch of ice"
Bye for now to the river cruise, our new friends, and the great staff on board - we had such a good time! Tomorrow it's off to finish our vacation in Prague (we go 4 hours by bus - sigh)...more to follow.
Regensburg (according to my handy ship info paper that they delivered every day) is the oldest city on the Danube and so it seems fitting that they also have the oldest restaurant in the world (that part I looked up on Wikipedia to see if it's a truth or just boastful talk haha!) called the "Historische Wurstküche zu Regensburg" ("Historic Sausage Kitchen of Regensburg").
Historic Sausage Kitchen. This building has been
here since at least the 17th century.
The menu is in German so it was sort of a crap shoot figuring out what to get, we struggled for a bit before the very nice waitress who spoke pretty decent English came to our rescue. I ordered the potato soup and was given the choice to add sausage links to the soup if I wished. Sausage links in my soup? Well why not since we were at the historic sausage kitchen after all. I loved it - seriously the food on this trip has been amazing, not a bad meal anywhere! They have tons of choices of sausages obviously, these were small finger-sized so having 2 in the soup wasn't crazy or inappropriate (haha!). Side story - apparently someone somewhere sometime (seems I might not have been paying enough attention to a boring tour guide) regulated that these sausages had to be a certain weight and small size; Sunday Mass was 5 to 6 hours long so people were hungry when they got done but they weren't supposed to eat meat so someone somewhere came up with the idea to make these small sausages finger size and thin so they could slip them thru keyholes in the door, that way no one knew they were eating the sausages. What can I say people, it's not my story - I'm just passing on the medieval gossip (or the parts I remember anyway) ;).
a sample of the menu, thankfully we had some help translating. potato soup is the first thing listed...
...and it's delicious!
After lunch we took a tour to the Danube Narrows and the Weltenburg Abbey. Unfortunately we had to travel to the Narrows (the river cuts thru the mountains and literally is at it's narrowest here, the long ship can't go thru - we got on a small ferry boat to see that part of the river) by bus (ugh) so our (lame) tour guide held us captive and took us by the Befreiungshalle(means "hall of liberation") a large domed building built to commemorate Bavaria's victory over Napoleon - it's being refurbished (which is very common everywhere we went on this trip - scaffolding is ever present) so you couldn't actually go in it and it wasn't even part of the tour but since we drove out of the way to see it (or not see it) then we didn't have enough time at the Abbey to try the beer that is famous world round because the monks make it right there and have won all kinds of awards for it. This is why I say the guide was lame LOL. I don't like beer so really it didn't matter to me but I'm being indignant on behalf of everyone on the bus who wanted to drink it (ahem, Dave) hahahah. Enough with the history info - back to the cruise...
Liberation Hall - see what I mean?
so we did what anyone would do when standing in front of a giant domed building
looking over amazing views of the city behind us - took a group selfie of course.
our bus shows the route we were taking on the Danube, Dave is pointing at where
we were on the map - Budapest is the dot above the naked woman's head.
don't ask why there is a naked woman taking a shower on the side of the bus.
no one has the answer.
notice anything wrong with this picture haha? I don't know if it's a typo or how they spell "drink" there!
rock formations on the Danube Narrows remind me of an Alaskan glacier
stained glass windows at St. Peter's Cathedral installed in the 14th century!
That night on board the chefs prepared a "Taste of Germany" - different sausages (naturally), spreads, pretzels and bread, along with tons of other stuff. Yum. I'm really starting to wonder when I'll be hungry again after this cruise - I'm full all the time! But it's so good! Afterwards there was more singing and dancing, and a mean card game of 31- we "bet" with yucky wasabi peas and at first we thought the loser should have to eat the pot of peas but since I lost first and wasn't about to eat them we changed that rule.
"taste of Germany"
don't let the smiles fool you - they're ruthless.
how could I possibly lose since I had the "stopper"?
