Camp food! It is one of the best parts of camping. True story, I spent an obscene amount of time on food during this camping trip, and I loved every second of it. Especially tasty were these basil burgers (home-grown basil!) stuffed with spicy serranos and some creamy feta to mellow it out.
I prepped these burgers before we left so that all we'd have to do is throw them on the grill. For one thing, I wanted to keep my hands off raw food as much as possible, and for another thing, I wanted to keep raw meat off our clean dishes because camp dishes...aren't cleaned quite as well as home dishes.
I mixed about half a cup of feta with one serrano pepper. Serranos are great because the heat permeates the whole pepper, not just the seeds and pith. Then I mixed up a quarter cup of chopped basil into one pound of burger and divided the burger into eight pieces.
I took each piece of burger and flattened it out as far as I could. Then I took about a quarter cup of the feta mixture and put it in the middle of a patty.
I took a second patty and put it on top of the first, then patted the two sides together to form a stuffed burger!
So, fast forward twenty four hours. Side dish for these burgers? Grilled mango and summer squash (from the garden!).
We brought a grate from an old grill along to cook food over the fire. It worked perfectly! And raw burger never touched a single dish besides the tongs.
Grill marks. Just the appearance of them seems to make food so much tastier :)
Serve everything up! I love that the squash and mango are the same color and just make the dish look so pretty.
I'm keeping this one Paleo! I know that breads and buns are great food delivery systems whilst camping, but home-grown kale works just as well, adds some fun crunch, and *doesn't* make you feel like you just ate half a house.
Mmmmm...there was major basil flavor on the first bite, and when I got to the feta, it was absolutely creamy and delicious. There was surprisingly little heat from the serranos - they had a nice crunch but almost no bite! I don't know if it was because they'd been encased in feta for a day, or maybe it just wasn't a potent pepper. But they were perfectly grilled and 100% amazing.
After we had these amazing burgers, we stopped at Short's Brewpub. Fantastic beer! Highly recommended if you ever make it to Michigan! Huma Lupa Licious is for sure a favorite, and I heard the Soft Parade is a beer that tastes like wine (didn't try it though).
Kyle and I shared a flight so we could figure out which one we wanted a glass of.
I ended up getting a glass of the ControversiALE, and Kyle got the organic '09 Golden Ale.
Saturday started out with some great weather, but we watched the rain clouds roll in off of Lake Michigan.
It was beautiful to watch, but when it hit - IT HIT HARD!
Confession: having no confidence in the tent, I opted to retreat to the truck. I would later eat my words when it stormed ALL NIGHT and the tent held up like a champ.
Despite the rain, I still managed to spend some time on the beach later that day and even finish a book! Okay, stay tuned for more camp stories - and some fantastic steak!
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