Smirnoff Summer Entertaining Extravaganza: Campfire Cookout

Thanks to Smirnoff and Foodbuzz my friends and I had a great weekend camping!  The weather did not hold out for us, unfortunately it rained both Friday night and Saturday night but we definitely made the best of it.
We planned on having a Campfire Cookout party Saturday night and decided to do something really different then the usual burger and hot dogs.  We decided what could be more fun than doing a grilled personal pizza party, over a campfire? 

To drink while preparing the pizzas we drank some Smirnoff drinks I brought to keep us cool.  During the day it got super humid and these were definitely good drinks to cool us down. I bought The Smirnoff Tuscan Lemonade, Smirnoff Vodka Mojito, and Smirnoff Pomegranate Martini, and Smirnoff Ice Triple Black.

 

These drinks were really good but definitely strong, my favorite was the Mojito, and it seemed all the girls really enjoyed the Pomegranate as well. Michelle had brought fresh Lime Mint from her garden at home and crushing up some of those leaves and putting them in the Mojito really made them taste fantastic. 

The one thing I recommend is definitely cutting it with something, the bottles suggested Soda Water but we didn’t have any.  We did use just regular bottled water (about a ¼ cups worth) and that really made them better.  I’m sure it would have been even better with the soda water though.

 

I made the dough Thursday night and brought it with us, I made enough dough for everyone to have their own personal pizza.  I used Michelle’s mom’s recipe and it worked out perfectly.

• 1 package yeast,
• 1 cup warm water,
• 1 teaspon sugar,
• 1 teaspoon salt,
• 2 tablespoons oil,
• 2 1/2 cups flour. 

Dissolve yeast with water stir in remaining ingredients. beat vigorously.  allow dough to rest.  spread dough on pan.  make your pizza!  

We decided to make one pizza for all of us to share and to test it out
For the test pizza we made it with just cheese and sauce. 

And onto the fire it went.

It cooked for about 25-30 minutes.

Meanwhile we all posed with the pizzas.

The boys:

And the girls:

The smoke was getting our eyes which is why Jess and I have them closed.

Unfortunately we forgot to grease the pan in any way and we kind of created a big mess.  The pizza was delicious but it was a pain to get it off the pan.

What a delicious mess.

Michelle had brought Pam but the container was empty so we used a small amount of butter on the foil each time just to keep it from sticking.  We brought a variety of toppings so everyone got to have exactly what they wanted.
Andrew’s pizza was up first and he chose to use BBQ sauce, mozzarella cheese, grilled chicken, and bacon bits on his pizza.

And onto the fire it went.

We didn’t have the timing down quite yet, so his was a little doughy, it’s hard to regulate the temperature and cook it thoroughly.  The real trick is to just be patient.  The bottom is going to be super crispy but honestly it tasted delicious even if it was black in some spots.

Next up was Scout and Rob, we decided to hurry the process along by putting 2 at a time on.
Scout decided to make a hamburger pizza.  He cooked up the hamburger meat in some bbq sauce and then used tomato sauce as a base on the dough.  He then layered meat, and American cheese on top.  His looked really great!  Definitely creative!

 

Rob went with a classic.  He used the tomato sauce, with mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, and bacon bits.  The smell of his cooking was really fantastic.  I think we made some of our camping neighbors pretty jealous.

Just as us girls were about to begin making our pizzas, dark clouds started rolling in.  A severe thunderstorm warning came on the radio and the sky just opened up.

  It poured for a few hours, and our chance at pizza over the campfire was quickly squashed.  We improvised with frying pans on the camping stove, which was sheltered by one of our canopies.  It was even harder to regulate the cooking on the stove top.

While Rob and Scout had been cooking their pizzas, the girls threw some fruit and veggies into tinfoil and threw it right in the fire.  So we had those to use on our pizzas.

Michelle’s pizzas was fresh mozzarella cheese, sauce, peppers, and eggplants.  I have to say I was pretty jealous of her pizza, it looked fantastic. Jessica used the fresh mozzarella, sauce, and peppers. 

Michelle’s is on the left and Jessica’s is on the right

 

And I used the fresh mozzarella, and pineapples on mine. But apparently I was too busy taking pictures of everyone else’s pizza because this is the only shot of it cooking I got.

 

Unfortunately the bottom of the pizzas started to almost burn but the top was completely doughy, we made do by scraping most of the dough off and just eating the crusty parts with the toppings, I have to say with all the trouble, and mishaps, the pizzas were really fun to make and to eat, and we all really enjoyed it.

I think this picture gives you an idea of how hard it was raining.

But we made the best of our time on the campground, and we definitely have some great memories.  The rain died down later that night and we were able to enjoy some time by the fire.

And we of course had dessert planned.

 

Thanks to Smirnoff and FoodBuzz for making our camping trip such a memorable one!

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What I’ve Been Up To

Oh my gosh I need to get back to regular blogging.  It’s been so difficult and I haven’t really been home much.  We have so much going on!

I really don’t think there has been a night in the past 2 weeks where I’ve been getting home before 10 o’clock and by that time I’m just so tired I want to crawl into bed with the A/C blasting, one day I came home and it was 96 degrees in the house!

One of the things we had to do last week was some wedding related things. We completely changed the location of the ceremony for the wedding, we met with the priest at Andrew’s church and decided to have it there.   It’s a beautiful church, and after speaking with the priest we realized that we would rather have it there, then at the chapel I originally posted here.  If we have it at the chapel we’d have to have special permission to get a priest to do it there since it’s a non-denominational chapel.  Thank goodness we have so much time so we do get to change our minds.  Here’s one of the only pictures I could find on the website.

We spent last weekend at my parents house while they were away visiting my grandparents in the Poconos, that way Bailey could stay with us and my parents wouldn’t have to bring her out there.  We got a lot of stuff accomplished that I’ve been putting off.  One of things was I had to find shoes to go with my dress for my cousins wedding.  And although they don’t look it they are actually quite comfy.

There’s also been time with friends, and family, and of course lots of quality time with Andrew.

Now in just a couple hours we’ll be heading out to go camping!  We had such a great weekend last time so, We all organized another trip and included my friends Laura and Billy this time.  I’m looking forward to it so much!

 Jessica, Michelle, and I went food shopping last night for the trip and we have some fun meals planned, that I will definitely be recapping on Sunday evening when we return.  We’ll be using our new tent, and my mom decided to spoil us and bought us a ceiling fan for it! 

I’m getting ready to leave work but just wanted to stop in and say hello! Also I’m on WordPress and I’m having lots of trouble with it.  Maybe I’ll be loading Live Writer onto this computer sometime soon. I use it at home and absolutely love it,  I forgot how hard it is to upload pictures without Live Writer.  Hope you all have a great weekend, and can’t wait to tell you all about the camping trip when I return.   Keep your fingers crossed that the weather’s wrong, because this is what is says for tonight and tomorrow as of right now.

Either way it should be fun!

89 Degrees

Not outside, the outside temperature at 3PM today was 97 degrees.  The 89 degrees refers to the temperature it was in my apartment when I got home.  Luckily it’s a small apartment and cools down really quickly.  But it’s definitely not fun to come home to.  This humidity is making me feel sluggish and making my sinuses hurt horribly.  I’m waiting to take some medicine until just before bed time because it’s a night time/sleep aide/decongestant, and I want to make sure I’m able to take it and sleep through the night.  Otherwise the second it wears off I’m wide awake.

The weather seemed perfect when I left for work this morning, no humidity, a nice breeze, probably only 78 or 80, it was a pleasent ride in to work with the windows down.  I can’t tell you how excited I was for today’s breakfast.  Look what I was finally able to fine in a local store!

Pomegranate Chobani! I knew I was a dork when I was food shopping yesterday and announced to Andrew it was the best day in my life while loading up the cart with the new flavored Chobani. 

You can’t see any in this shot but there were quite a few pom seeds floating around in that yogurt.

I mixed it with some Kashi Island Vanilla.

.

I have to say this might be my new favorite flavor!

Lunch today was a delicious pb & j on a whole wheat wrap.

Love!

On the side I had a new kind of organic applesauce I found at the store yesterday.

Can you see the ingredients?

Just organic apples and I guess some added vitamin C.  Unsweetened applesauce is so delicious!  Definitely a delicious side.

I also brought a plum but wound up not eating that until around 3:30 when I got snacky.

Beautiful and juicy.

So once I got home I let the house cool down while I made a refreshing salad.  With only the BIGGEST cucumber I’ve ever seen!

Bigger then my cutting board!

When standing on the counter it rested a good 4 inches above the bottom of my cabinets.  I got this cuc from a co-worker, fresh from her garden.  Expect to see a lot of cucumber in the coming days!

I barely made a dent in it and had some over romaine lettuce.

Perfect for a hot muggy day.

While perusing blogs today I saw some cheesy garlic bread (I forget on which blog) but it looked amazing and I decided to recreate some at home.

I used a hot dog roll, a small amount of (REAL) butter, garlic powder, and a 2% milk string cheese, with some cheddar also sprinkled on.  It was absolutely perfect, and tasted a lot like cheesey bread you’d get at a restaurant, and it was definitely healthier because it wasn’t greasy at all.

I’m really bad at blogging over the weekends, but I can’t wait to share some pictures with you all of a baseball game I went to on Friday, unfortunately I forgot my camera so I have to get them from my friend Jess tomorrow or hopefully soon.

Well I don’t have the A/C on in the office so I’m getting really hot sitting here, hope you all have a great night and stay cool!

By The Sea

This feels so comfortable, sitting at my desk, blogging about my day’s food.  I didn’t realize how much I missed this! 

I have to say today was an excellent day, work just flew right by with no stress or anything.  After I got out Andrew and I went out to dinner, and then we spent some time with his family.  Can’t get a much better Thursday then that!

Since I wasn’t able to blog last week, I didn’t get to tell you I’m back to working Fridays now.  Last week was my first full week back since March! The weeks definitely feel a whole lot longer, but I’m happy my paychecks are back to normal. 

Breakfast today was a blueberry Chobani.  I meant to bring some things to mix-in but forgot.  I decided to check out the vending machines for some options.  I found a granola bar I used to eat when I was younger and decided to crush that up and mix it in.

And a much needed close up.

This was such a fun combination, it really reminded me of when I was younger.

Lunch was simple.  I was going to have a pb & j sandwich but decided to just have pb open faced on a sandwich thin.

So yummy!

Surprisingly I didn’t even have to dip into any snacks later on.  I had a nice normal appetite today, not a bottomless pit, or a lack of appetite.  Just Right.

For dinner Andrew and I had plans to cook but we had some errands to run, and want to spend some time with his family before they leave for vacation this weekend so we decided to just hit up the small restaurant on the bay by our apartment.  The weather was absolutely perfect for eating out on the patio.  It’s been so humid here, but the rain this morning balanced everything out.

You can’t beat a view like this while eating dinner.

 

Here are a couple of the fishing boats that run each day.

Such a fun night out!

I got a water to drink.

And for dinner I can’t stay away from breakfast at this place.  They do such a great job!  I got a  pepper, onion, and egg sandwich on whole wheat toast.

With a small side of home fries.

I wasn’t planning on eating all the home fries, but they are so darn good I definitely did.

Now I’m off to play some Wii Sports Resort with Andrew,  has anyone else played this new game yet?  It’s so much fun!

Oh before I go, did anyone else see Nigella Lawson’s new fridge?  I usually don’t swoon after an appliance but it’s actually really beautiful.  I found this on This Kitchn.

And here’s a shot of it open.

This fridge looks bigger then my entire kitchen, but I would love to have something like this one day.  I can dream can’t I?

 

Well I better go before Andrew beats all my high scores!

Guess Who’s Back…

So this long hiatus was completely unintentional.  Our internet was down since the last time I posted until today!  I kind of gave up on taking pictures of my food after a few days of being cut off from the cyber world.  It came back so unexpectedly I didn’t take any pictures today, I wish I had checked it before leaving for work, it might have been up then and then I would have been able to write a normal post!  I have to say although I was eating as normal, it was kind of nice, because I hate a lot of repeat meals and didn’t have to worry about the blog getting boring!  I was able to have the same dinner 2 nights in a row without worrying about the blog.  But that gets boring after a while, I hope being able to post will light a fire under my butt to get back to making some fun things.  I have a few recipes I can’t wait to try and now that I can post, I’m excited to try some new things!

Before I post some pictures that I’ve been waiting to share you guys, thanks for all the compliments on the engagement party photos.  You guys really know how to make a girl feel good about herself!

So the night before our engagement party we went with a few friends to the county fair!  It was the first time I’ve gone to it that I can remember, although my parents told me I went when I was younger.  It was so much fun!  The best part was we got to watch 2 exciting events.

The first was a Lumberjack competition.  The pictures I got of this aren’t that great because we were kind of far away.

They had 2 lumberjacks competeting with a few different challenges.  They did some with chainsaws, axes, climbing those big poles you see, and log rolling.  Very fun to watch.

Here’s a funny, yet embarrassing, lumberjack related story that Andrew just loves to tell.  Once while we were having a bonfire at Andrew’s parent’s house Andrew decided to stand on some of the unused firewood, he looked like when you see lumberjacks on tv doing the log rolling.  He was doing a pretty good job at walking on the wood and making it rotate under his feet.  I wanted to say “You’d make a great lumberjack”, but couldn’t think of the word lumberjack at all.  You know how frustrating that is, I’m sure.  Well I wound up saying, “You’d make a great, uh, um…log farmer.”  Him and our friends busted out laughing, “LOG FARMER!!!” they all screached at me.  And I haven’t lived it down yet.  I don’t ever forget the word Lumberjack anymore, or Astronaut for that matter.  I once had the same forgetfulness with that word, and called them space cowboys! Yikes I say some stupid stuff sometimes.

This ones really hard to see but one of the lumberjacks was climbing to the top of the poles, they move so quickly!

In between this show and the next event we decided to have some ice cream.  I got a cookies and cream cone.  I can honestly say I haven’t had an ice cream since I was about 8, so it was a very different treat for me.

Thanks Andrew for catching this one, the pictures I took were awful!

Then it was time for the main event, the one that was the reason we sat on those bleachers for so long just to hold our front row seats, Pig Racing!

Unfortunately after sitting in our seats for almost an hour, an entire group of kids decided to stand right in front of us, this was really our view for most of the races.

So disappointing!

After much encouragement from ourselves, and people behind us these kids sat down on the ground.  I’m so going to be the old lady yelling at kids to get out of my yard.

So cute!

These pigs were swimming!

Apparently these pigs are racing for an oreo!  They all get oreos at the end of the race, that’s there encouragement and what they are running for.

I wish I had more pictures to share of the pig racing, it was really fun to watch. 

There were lots of animal exhibits.  But somehow the only picture I got was an albino snake.

As much as I hate snakes, I had to admit seeing this was so cool.  The white was so bright and it was actually kind of beautiful in a snakey way.

So there you have it I watched my first lumberjack competition and pig race.  What an exciting night!

Keep your fingers crossed that our internet continues to be up and running tomorrow.