Eating while camping

Last night I went to a friend's house with a few other ladies associated with CAJ. At this time of year there is no schedule and it's easy to become isolated. As for me . . . well I've just spent the last two weeks camping with four guys! Hanging out with girls was just fun, though perhaps I ran off at the mouth more than I usually do?

Anyway, they had some questions about this camping. Several were about cooking: did you use a fire, what did you cook, how did you keep things cold, did you take everything with you or buy along the way?

We did cook with a fire, but we also have a compact single ring gas burner, using easily available gas cans. This was a good back up or for when we didn't make a fire like on moving mornings (when we had cereal, tinned fruit, and yoghurt), but we still wanted a cup of coffee or tea. But I didn't take a photo of it.


Here is our main stove. It was a new one that I bought unused from a local second hand store. The main attraction is that it packs very flat. But it also folds out large and you can cook quite a lot on top. Additionally, it has a lot more air flowing around it, so was generally easier to start a fire on than what we previously had, which was basically a deep metal tray with little air flow.

On top you can see our two Japanese rice cookers as well as various root vegetables in foil, one of our favourite ways to have veggies at camp.

This is how thin the stove is folded up. It's called a portable notebook!

On moving days, or days when we were not at camp we usually ate take away food from convenience stores or at stops on the expressway. Japan has a wonderful array of fairly healthy food available for reasonable prices in convenience stores everywhere. Pictured is a doria, basically a cheesy white sauce baked over rice. I think it had some meat in it, but I can't remember now. We ate this lunch in a laundromat on a wet day between our first and second campsites, obviously while we washed and dried clothes.








Here was another lunch when we were in town for the day, visiting sights. We took a picnic lunch and ate it in a multi-storey carpark. David did a great job of making it look tasty. We even had a view, to the right was out to the road, but we could see potted flowers out there! There were toilets nearby, so we had everything that we needed.

My son's face is blanked out, I don't put photos of them on my blog.

This is a classic Japanese stir fry cooking over the fire: yaki soba. We didn't have room to take food for us all for two weeks, so bought food in standard Japanese grocery stores along the way. My menu therefore held things that were easily available in most Japanese stores. 

Someone asked if we had a generator and the answer is no. We camped electricity-free. This is our cooler (Esky in Aussie English). It held sufficient cold stuff for a couple of days and we bought blocks of ice (see below) daily to keep things cold. Interestingly most stores sell blocks in sealed plastic, which last much longer than ice chunks that you might put in drinks.

One of our favourite meals was veggies in foil cooked in the fire. Potatoes, pumpkin, and carrots, but the best was sweet potato! A couple of times we had BBQ meat with the veggies, that was also enjoyed by all. Japanese butchers do the best BBQ meat: thinly sliced meat (only a couple of mm thick) cooks so fast and is easy to eat.

Here's another meal on the go, we were eating out the front of a convenience store at an expressway layover.

We even had pizza, twice! A new camping meal I hadn't thought would be possible. We made pizza on top of basic damper dough (flour, raising agent, and water) folded it over and cooked it in foil. Was so yummy the boys clamoured for a repeat.

There's nothing quite like a fire to make camping great. One day a storm blew in just after we'd finished setting up and in the middle of my starting the fire. So, in the midst of the wind and the rain (actually it was mostly rain), I stood there and fanned the fire which we'd dragged under our annex. We were able to eat dinner soon after, even though we were surrounded by quite soggy ground. 

Cooking on this fire, I believe, is my favourite camping dessert: a banana boat. A banana sliced in half lengthways and filled with chocolate and marshmallows. Absolutely scrumptious.

Our working holiday weekend

It's Thursday and I'm writing about last weekend. What? That's just how the week has rolled, I'm afraid.

Last Thursday night we flew to Canberra and stayed at a motel for the night.

Friday morning the boys were thrilled to find they could have a buffet breakfast. I tell you, we got our money's worth out of that breakfast!

Then we spent the day visiting two families in different parts of the city, breaking it up with a picnic lunch on our own and a brief visit to the Australia War Memorial. The weather was much cooler than Brisbane (we'd come from about 40 degrees C on Thursday), crisp, clear and dry, oh so dry.

It was a day of intense conversation, enjoyable, but thoroughly exhausting.

We squished into our borrowed car at about 6pm and headed south to Jindabyne (see here for more info on that township). It was odd to be driving in such a small car, but we

The car we gratefully used for the weekend. We needed
help to get all our luggage to and from the campsite.

survived fairly well for most of the journey, until our long limbed teenager began to complain. Thankfully I'm smaller than him and we switched seats for the rest of the journey. 

When we arrived people were socialising over supper in the dining room, so, to get a feel for everything I joined in (not because I was hungry). The last thing I actually felt like doing, though, was more talking! But thankfully people were friendly and it wasn't too hard.

Lake Jindabyne, part of the Snowy Mountain
Hydroelectric Scheme. This view was from the access road
to the campsite.

The next morning was the heaviest of the long-weekend. They'd scheduled a full morning of talks (basically two long sermons). The room initially looked very comfortable, with everyone seated on lounge chairs. But I found them as difficult as most lounge chairs without extra cushions: the seat base was too long, forcing me to slouch or curl up my legs.

Beautiful spot, don't you think? The accommodation was
wonderful too. If you're ever down that way, check out the
Adventist Alpine Village. They have self-contained chalets
as well as caravan and tenting spots. 

Lunch that day was an off-site BBQ where the many children and teens played in the park. That was a great time that marked a turning point for our boys in relating to other people. From that point on we hardly saw some of them. Thankfully we had the rest of the afternoon off for free time and then an evening of fun games.

But our main work on the weekend was talking to people. I think I was one of the last people to leave the dining room almost every meal (apart from those who were on kitchen duty). What a privilege to get to spend so much time with one supporting church. 

View from our chalet's verandah.

And wildlife. This wombat was wandering around near our
cabin one evening.

We did get a chance to talk up the front later on Sunday night for about 40 minutes. I found that time-slot a struggle, it was getting close to my Cinderella hour and most people looked a bit sleepy! But the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive. My "hats" presentation continues to connect well with people.

Kangaroos everywhere, morning and evening.

After lunch on Monday we drove back to Canberra. There was much unrest in the car (we were tired and it was squishy). Thankfully I struck on the conversational strategy of hypotheticals. For example, "What sort of place (seaside, mountains, hot, cold, etc.) would you live in, if you had total freedom in that choice?" It carried us through to the end of our journey, the airport.

Another view from our verandah.

Flying domestically is such a breeze! But by the time we arrived home, at about 8.30pm, we were done-in. It was a bit of a nightmare, actually. Just getting boys to bed, let alone the other tasks of unpacking, washing clothes, preparing lunches for the next day was enough. But we had no internet. A virtual disaster when one person was looking forward to connecting with his buddies again online. It didn't end well.

The next day we were up and into things, no respite. After dropping the boys at school I had a physio appointment, got a haircut and my licence renewed and did grocery shopping, taking time for some clothes shopping as well. That afternoon I spent ages sitting outside (the only place where the internet dongle would work, our Plan B when broadband isn't working) catching up on email that had piled up over the weekend.

You can see why I'm only just starting to surface now. Oh, and that's not telling you about my personal health challenges . . . nothing big, just need to get to the doctor for some antibiotics tomorrow . . . and a certain assignment that wasn't getting done.

Nonetheless, I'm glad we made the effort to go to Canberra and this church camp. It was a worthwhile weekend. On the other hand I am thankful this coming weekend is much quieter!

Building Relationships This Year

Back in November we met with the pastor and an elder of our home church. It was a long discussion, but one of the results was:

Their challenge to us ... to get to know as many people as we can in the church so they feel connected to what we do before we go back next year.

It's gradually happening. We had lunch at the house of a key family from our church last week and stayed into the evening. Yesterday we hosted a BBQ, inviting two families over after church.

Our six-week long break from deputation is just about finished, along with the relaxed pace of the school holidays. So it's about to become more difficult to fit social engagements in. However, we've got a bit of work to do if we're going to invite more people around for meals. It does seem that that's a great way to fast-forward relationships. Just seeing people around after church or at other events isn't enough, more time needs to be invested.

What was really cool about yesterday was that we also could spontaneously invite the guest preacher and his wife and five boys over to join us. Their church supports us too and we'd first met them at not too long before Christmas at their church, so it was good to be able to see them again. Building relationships, it's our catch-cry for the year in Oz.

The other great thing about having people over who haven't had much contact with missionaries before is that we can have much less difficult, less forced conversations about mission. While chilling in the air con after eating yesterday we fielded casual questions about our lives. Just like any other person would have when being asked about their lives as you got to know them.

I'm really tempted to go on a rabbit trail giving advice here. If you invite a missionary or pastor to come to serve at your church on a Sunday and they've driven over an hour to get there, or you finish church at a time that means it's meal time. And especially if they have kids! Make sure that they are provided for, the best thing would be to have a church member invite them over for a meal. It's just courtesy. And you never know, in blessing them you might actually be blessed yourself!

But back to now, I need to go and bake a cake to take to an Australia Day BBQ we've been invited to at the house of friends from church this afternoon.