Southern-Direction: Cowboy Cooking

Hey Ya'll!

I hope everyone made the best they could out of July 4th and whatever vacationing could be done. We sure did around here!

We are not the go vacationing for the 4th kind of folks usually. Most the time to be quite honest we're usually working. It's very much took for granted that most people are off on typical holidays but honestly it's just not so. We are also limited greatly by the fact that we have animals. Someone must be able to tend and feed them.

Fortunately, we made our escape just over the hill and camped out the week. Several of the children were able to either pop in or camp with us the majority of the week.

Here's a few of the smiling faces.

Not a bad looking bunch for some river bathed campers.

We didn't go to a traditional campground but chose to rough it on some of the Ole Man's property. He wasn't sure about our whole endeavors considering he wasn't going to be able to stay more than a day or two because of work. He also was pained that we didn't do much more planning.

This man is a planner.

This women is a go by the seat of you pants-er.

The first day we started out just picking a spot and beating down some field grass to set up camp. I know it could have been mowed or cleared first but hence the go by the seat of the pants part.

Me purchasing a 12-quart cast iron dutch oven and a hey...let's do it a few weeks before was the inspiration for this camping endeavors.

Within a few hours time, the Ole Man had this awesome fire pit built for me.

and the beans were on!

We initiated the black pot with 15 Bean Soup with smoked sausage.

It was so..so..good.

We had got rain during the day and being down on the creek made that warm stew a blessing.

Within the day, we had really turned into tent city.

I brought a few essential cast iron cookware for the week. I'm a believer in keeping the coffee on and not much beating some eggs in the morning. Truly, we did more eating than anything;

a good bit of of creek playing, hiking and foraging,