Getting ready to head to the cabin, especially for a long weekend, requires planning and precision packing.

I was always impressed by my Aunt Helen who worked all week, come home Friday night and turned around and headed off to the lake. She not only brought home the bacon, she cooked and packed it too.

Due to the remoteness of our lake, food requires careful planning, otherwise we’ll end up eating hot dogs and potato chips all weekend. That actually would be Bill’s ideal food weekend, but I like a little more variety. If you’re scrambling for food ideas here’s what I’ve planned for our weekend:

Menu Ideas

Saturday

• Costco Kettle Ribs (pre-made just have to re-heat)
• steamed baby potatoes drizzled with fresh dill and butter
• corn-on-the-cob

Sunday

• Roast Beef marinated in oyster sauce cooked with baby potatoes, carrots, onions, parsnips
• Wild Blueberry crisp (re-printed from Penny’s Blog www.cottagelife.com)
• Wild Blueberry CrispFilling:
  5 cups (750 g) wild blueberries (1.25 L)
  1/4 cup (50 g) sugar (60 ml)
  1/2 tsp grated lemon rind (2.5 ml)
  1 cup (2 medium) diced peeled apples (250 ml)Crisp:
  1/2 cup (100 g) light brown sugar (125 ml)
  2 tsp cinnamon (10 ml)
  1 tsp nutmeg (5 ml)
  1/2 cup (65 g) white flour (125 ml)
  1/2 cup (65 g) chopped pecans (optional) (125 ml)
  1/2 cup (50 g) rolled oats (125 ml)
  1/4 lb (115 g) butter (60 ml)Preheat oven to 325°F/165°C. In a small bowl, combine wild blueberries, sugar, lemon rind, and apples. Mix well and place in a well-buttered 8″ x 8″ x 2″ (20 x 20 x 5 cm) pan. In a medium bowl, combine brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour, pecans, and oats. Rub in the butter with your fingers until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Spread evenly over the wild blueberry mixture. Bake 45 minutes or until the crust is brown.

Monday

• Pasta with grilled sausages - I use smokies, or Freybe’s Turkey and Sun Died Tomato, or something spicy
• ( dice and saute one sweet onion, salt, 3 cloves of garlic, 2 - 3 pounds of fresh diced tomatoes, dash of red pepper flakes heat all the ingredients for 5 to 8 minutes add cooked chopped sausages and serve on a bed of linguine topped with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese)
• Caesar salad

With the food out of the way I can now turn my attention to packing. Here’s my cottage check-list:

• Clean Linens (usually stored in a garbage bag)
• Dog food and leash
• XM Satellite Player
• DVD Player and DVD’s
• Laptop and camera
• Clothes, shoes, coats
• Food (perishables and non-perishables)
• Drinks - kids and adults
• Kid’s activity bag - pastels, colouring books, word puzzles, paints and brushes
• Good book to read (just finished Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden about to start Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali)

Just getting all this stuff together and into the Jeep takes about half a day. My hat goes off to my Aunt Helen who made it all look so easy.

Happy long weekend everyone!

Cheers,

Julie

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 10:19 am and is filed under Current News, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.