Homemade Bagels From The RV? Yes...

Before I found out I have to eat a gluten free diet, I really enjoyed a good bagel with my coffee for breakfast. Now that I can't have a "real" bagel, I really miss them. I have found some good frozen ready made ones, but since I live 85 miles from the nearest place to buy them, I don't always have them on hand.

I decided today to try making some at home. Yes, Linda, I did burn them a bit, but you have to remember, 1. I live in an RV and the oven is quite tiny and the thermostat on it is not exact and 2. I live at an elevation of almost 9000 feet. Baking anything is trial and error. For the baking conditions I have, this first attempt at homemade bagels turned out pretty good. To see more, click here.

I Don't Think The Trailer Is Level...

Settleing In At The North Rim

We arrived here last Saturday in the afternoon. We set up the trailer and rested on Sunday. I started working on Monday morning. For this week, there was just me and my lead (supervisor), Kathie, here. Training starts tomorrow, but we were busy all last week getting things ready. It was my job to make copies, tons of them, to make the training manuals.

When I finished making the training manuals, the two of us went through all of them to make sure they are all the same. They were, thank goodness.

Then, I went over to the campground to clean and stock the campground office. The building was new last year, and has lots of cabinets and drawers in it. Last year, none of them were labeled, so I took a couple of hours to making labels and attaching them to all the drawers and doors. Now we will be able find things quickly!

The next task was to inventory the signs at the various bulletin boards around the campground, and make new ones. Printing was pretty quick, but the laminating took a while as there are lots of signs.

Meanwhile, the volunteer camp host was busy splitting wood from trees that fell over the winter for us to use in our wood stove out at the entrance station:


Doing all that stuff involved a lot of walking around. Our office is about a hundred yards from the admin office, and every time I had to make copies, or print in color, or use the laminator, I had to walk over there and back. Walking around the campground taking inventory of things was another long stroll, too. Combine all that walking with getting used to an altitude of over 8800 feet, and I was pooped out at the end of every day!

(A stand of Aspens near the group sites in the campground)

On Friday, when all the campground stuff was as done as we could get it, Kathie and I drove out to the entrance station to start the process out there. The entrance station is 10.5 miles from our office. We had been hearing co-workers from other departments telling us about seeing a couple of turkeys out at th 7 mile marker on Hwy 67, so we both had our cameras with us, ready if we saw them. Sure enough, we DID run into a couple of turkeys out there on the side of the road, just not the ones we were looking for:

(Fabgrandpa and Harry)

Finally, the week was over, and I had two days off, Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday, I did all the laundry, cleaned the trailer, cooked dinner, and read part of a book I found in the library here. Silent Witness by Mark Fuhrman is the story of Terry Schiavo's death. It is very interesting, written by a retired homicide detective.

Today, we got up very early and decided to drive down to Jacob Lake, about 45 miles away, to have breakfast, but the main reason for the drive was because it was such a beautiful day. The sun is shining and there are fluffy white coulds floating by. We saw a few deer, but I still did not see the turkeys. On the way back, the combination lock on the gate was messed up and wouldn't open. I was going to drive back 5 miles to the nearest pay phone and call for help, but I passed a law enforcement ranger who stopped, and he had a key to let us in. Hooray for that!!!

The rest of the afternoon was spent baking. I made some blackberry and some strawberry muffins, with real fruit in them:

Also, a dozen Kinniknick rolls:


I should be set for a week or two on breads. I am also thinking about making one of those yummo Lemon Cakes. It sure would taste good!

I Spent The Day Baking

I haven't written much about cooking in the past couple of months, mostly because I haven't been cooking that much. Whenever I start a new job, I come home exhausted mostly just from learning it. This new job I have has taken a lot out of me because there has been so much to learn and it is very fast paced out there on the entrance station. A lot of people want to see the Grand Canyon. And, this week, I had one day that I had to be at work at 5:30 a.m. and one when I had to be there at 6:30 a.m. Although I love my job, I am not so good with early morning wake up times.


We have been grabbing this or that when we can, eating a lot of quick to fix dishes, salads, and the old standby of scrambled eggs or pancakes for dinner. So, since I was off today, I decided to do some baking so that this week we will have a little more variety in our meals.


I mixed up a batch of those good cheese-garlic biscuits using my Pamela's Baking Mix. All I will have to do now every night this week is pop a few in the oven and bake for 22 minutes. These are really good and go with just about everything.



I had several bananas that were already turned black, so I peeled them and mashed them up and made some banana muffins. These were also made with Pamela's Baking Mix. I put in some almond extract and some Chinese Five Spice Powder, too. MMMMM. These will be good for breakfast with some peanut butter.



I decided to make some bread while I was at it. This loaf of bread turned out not so good, so I am not telling the recipe I used. It will do for breadsticks or garlic bread, though, so I'm not chunking it in the trash can. It's not THAT bad, but it ain't that good, either.



And since I had some strawberries and cherries in the fridge that needed to be used up, I wanted to make something I could use as the base for Strawberry Shortcake. I found a very good, easy recipe online at RecipeZaar. The write up about this shortcake on their website said it tastes like the wheat based spongecakes you can buy at the store, and they do! This is the first time since I started cooking gluten free that I made a cake and the batter actually looked like cake batter. See:

Here is the recipe:

1/2 cup butter
1 cup confectioners sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup cornstarch
1 1/4 tsp baking powder

Cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs and vanilla and beat until light and fluffy. Add the cornstarch and baking powder a little at a time, mix until well blended. Fill greased muffin tins half full and bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees. I baked mine for 22 minutes because they were still too sticky on top after 15 minutes. (But that could be my little RV oven).

The recipe says to grease muffin tins and fill them half full. I did, and they grew up over the edge of the muffin tins and dripped down into the guts of the oven, so we had that burny smell in the trailer. Also, they stuck somewhat in the muffin tins, so next time I will use those little cupcake papers, but let me tell you, they are really GOOD! I will definitely be making these again.