That aside, Wisconsin is a great place to camp and Interstate State Park has a really nice campground (although it doesn't have working water faucets...) with lots of trees and a pretty lake. The campground is right along the St. Croix River and there are pretty bluffs on both sides of the river (mini-)gorge.
Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the scenery -- but I did take lots of pictures of the amazing food we ate!
On Saturday morning, Boyd made banana pancakes that we perfectly fluffy and flavorful. It's a recipe from the Joy of Cooking, so you can recreate the experience on your own at home.
On Saturday night, after a long day of lazing around the campsite, hiking 1 mile around the lake, sunbathing, etc. Rupa prepared a very special dinner for us. Now, I don't get homemade Indian food all that often, so I was tickled pink (as Boyd's dad would say) to have excellent Indian food while camping!
Our first course was pratha, which is Indian flat bread stuffed with vegetables and spices. Rupa first made the dough and the vegetable filling separately. Then she made a little pouch with the dough and filled it with the veggie mix. Once she had the filled dough pouch she patted it flat and then used a rolling pin to make it into a flat pancake. The flattening process mixes all the ingredients together, so it's no longer dough with filling but both parts mixed together. Then she fries it lightly and serves it up hot. It was perfect mouthwateringly good - especially when I dipped it in the raita (yogurt dip) with little lentil balls in it.
Here is Rupa rolling out the Pratha (pronounced pra-ta).
I wanted to eat 5-6 of these, but I exercised extreme restraint to limit myself to just two so that I still had room for the main course. While Rupa was rolling the prathas, the Chicken Biryani (spicy chicken mixed with rice) was cooking over the open fire. She layered the rice and chicken pieces in the pot and then sealed the pot with dough around the edges. The dough seal makes it like a pressure cooker, so that everything cooks more quickly.
As tends to happen with Indian food, I ate too much and had to sit and relax and digest for a good while before I was ready for.......
Gena & Jason's famous dutch oven dessert!! Gena put together a camp favorite this time, a Mississippi Mud cake with chocolate chips and nuts on top. It cooks on the side of the fire with coals below and on top and after about 45 minutes we got fluffy, moist, chocolatey cake. Wow! Here she is (pictured right) scooping out a great helping of cake.
Besides all the good food. The other cool part of the trip was that we had lots of kids with us. It's great to get the youngsters interested in being outdoors and enjoying nature. Fiona (pictured below with a watermelon slice) experienced her first "wee in the woods" on this trip! Aubrey (in the pink shirt) loved just walking up the hill and back down again. Adele (the one in the middle) couldn't get enough of the pebbles in the campsite and floating on the lake. Hopefully someday soon I'll get to camp with my nieces too!
I'm just making sure the comments section works!
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