Visiting my grandmother in the fall always meant picking apples from her backyard orchard and drinking apple cider. Now that she’s gone and my parents live in the house, we knew there would be several trees full of apples that needed to be cidered.
I spent a lovely day picking apples with my parents while Gordon built an apple grinder and press. He used these plans from Matthias Wandel for the grinder and designed a small press using a scissor or bottle jack. Continue reading
Did you know doing your civic duty can be delicious? Neither did I. But thanks to Gordon’s love of the Reader’s Digest Back to Basics book, we spent election day eating cake. Continue reading
Gordon and I both grew up with Dutch oven cooking. Many of my childhood memories include pine trees at a mountain campground, dirty knees, and the 
smell of chocolate cherry cobbler cooking in a Dutch oven. My mother-in-law cooks almost everything in cast iron. We’ve never been intimidated by Dutch ovens because we spent too much time around them as children. Continue reading
If you want to impress people with your Dutch oven skills without necessarily having skills, this is a great way to go. First, read our basic tips for Dutch oven cooking here. Continue reading
We love trying new things almost as much as we love a good deal. So this week we went on a tour of factory outlet stores in Cache Valley, Utah. Continue reading
Have I mentioned yet that Gordon’s favorite food is chicken cordon bleu? Spending time in the mountains means finding creative, non-oven ways to make this favorite dish. This breaded grilled chicken covered in melted Swiss and sliced ham made for an awesome dinner in the middle of nowhere. Continue reading
Chicken Cordon Bleu has always been Gordon’s favorite dish. And smoking whole chickens is one of his favorite pastimes. So it only made sense that eventually he would smoke a whole chicken stuffed with ham and cheese.
This roasted chicken cordon bleu came out juicy and flavorful with a hint of smokiness. Really, the hardest part of this recipe is de-boning a whole chicken, since it’s not really something you do every day. Continue reading
Not sure how to organize all those little bottles of spices? This magnetic spice board has been a game-changer for us at home.
The more we experimented with different dishes, the more out of control our spice shelf became. We had stacks of spice bottles covering half of a pantry shelf to the point that it was impossible to find anything and the spices in front buried the spices behind. Continue reading
If you ever need to feed (and impress) a lot of people in a remote location, consider paella. It sounds like a fancy foreign dish (because it is), but it is also easy to make, delicious, and can feed a crowd.
Our campfire paella happened when Gordon’s cousin gave us a three foot paella pan for Christmas (she thought it was funny, and figured it would be fun at the cabin). As soon as we had a long weekend, we took it up into the wilderness to try it out. Continue reading
We had heard rumors for awhile that you can cook steak directly on top of the coals in your campfire and the juices would keep the steak from getting ashy. So naturally, we had to give it a shot. We figured best case scenario, it would make even more utensils unnecessary on camping trips. Worst case scenario, you scrape off the ashes and the steak is probably still edible. Continue reading
Mountain Man Living 