Camping: Fruit Mix

Very simple basic fruit mix. Here, I use green and red grapes, strawberry, cantaloupe, and kiwi. Any combination will do, but since I won't be serving it right away, I avoid using fruits that tend to turn mushy and/or change color overtime.


Drizzle some honey, toss, and store in 'chilled' tupperware. The night before, I squeeze some lime juice to ice cube tray and let it freeze. Just before packing to cooler, toss in the lime juice 'ice-cube' to container.

Along with this, I also make some almond pudding (which I forgot to take pictures of) - just those almond pudding from the box. Cube them up, put them in separate container. Chilled. Mix to fruit cocktail just before eating/serving.

Mexican Wedding Cookies

Another very easy cookies to make.

Most of the time when I make these cookies, I shape it to crescent shape. It looks more delicate, just like the texture and taste of the cookies. Though there are times that I just roll it into balls, especially if I have to make dozen dozen batch of it. Or, experiment with different shape, oval, etc.

I was hoping to make crescent shape today, but somehow (I wonder if it's the heat in kitchen, from all day grilling and baking) the dough, as I roll it, goes soft pretty quickly, which make it harder to shape to crescent. So, round shape it is. :)

These cookies remind me of 'kue salju' ('snow cookies') we used to have while growing up. I wasn't particularly fond of it - too sweet and what a mess, eating 'em, sticky sugary powder. Mexican wedding cookies is not as dense as kue salju and has little crunch to it, from its coarsely chopped pecans.


What:
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup confectioner sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup chopped pecans

How:
- Beat butter and sugar until smooth and creamy.
- Add in vanilla.
- At low speed, gradually add flour. Once well combined, mix pecans in the dough with spatula.
- Shape dough to balls and prefereably, into crescent shape. Or, it can be pressed into oval or round shape.
- Bake in preheated 350F oven for 10-15 minutes, or until the bottom of cookies golden brown. Cookies will bake very quickly.
- Once cooled, dust more confectioner sugar on top of it. I like to dust only very little before storing it. Then, dust more just before serving.

Note:
The dough will have very creamy soft consistency/ texture, hence, make the rolling somewhat tricky. I found that especially in very hot day, even when the dough stays in its shape, the heat from my hand soften the dough more as I roll it. I guess if it becomes really hard to work with, try to put it in fridge for few minutes.

Camping : Quiche.

Finally we got the chance to go camping this year!! :)

We decided that the big meals will be typical camping meals - of course, one of the fun things going camping is all those meals over firepit, grill, and such. Surely though, 'I' have to cook/bake something!! Everybody kinda give in with that thoughts already, dessert and sweet stuff, sure. As long as I don't try to drag the entire kitchen with me. Heehee.

Plus, we are the only one that has next to zero camping equipment. The few camping things we took with us from KY were the tent and 1 sleeping bag. So, I feel like we have to contribute in something, yes? Since everything else will be borrowed from everyone else' stuff. :D

So..Light quiche and cold cucumber salad as Friday night meal. Few nibbles: Lemon Bars and Mexican Wedding Cookies. Peach Coffee-cake. Lemon Blueberry sponge cake. And fruit cocktail with almond pudding.

Quiche
What:
- 1 pie shell (store bought or home-made)
- 2 eggs
- handful of freshly grated parmesan cheese
- 2 tbs parsley, chopped
- 1/4 tsp dried oregano
- 1/4 cup half and half
- 1 1/2 cup milk
- pinch of nutmeg
- salt and pepper
- 1 box of spinach
- broccolis, chopped/ cut to small florets
- 1 carrots, shred
- 1/2 onion, cut to thin rings (optional)

How:
- Whisk together cheese, parsley, oregano, milk, half and half, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Give it a taste (whether need extra cheese, etc), before adding eggs to it. Mix in eggs, whisk.
- Bake empty pie shell in preheated oven for about 10-15 minutes.
- Heat 2 tbs olive oil in pan and cook onions until it caramelizes. Let cool for a little bit.
- Assemble quiche by pouring caramelized onions to the shell. Spread it thinly to cover the base of shell.
- Scatter the spinach, then broccoli, shredded carrots, to fill up the quiche shell.
- Gently pour the liquid ingredients on top of vegetables. Add some shredded swiss on top of it.
- Slide it back to oven and bake for about 15 minutes, or until the eggs/liquid part is set.

Note:
Typical quiche is richer, denser and creamier, due to more eggs, cheese (swiss/gruyere) and using whole milk and/or cream. Very tempted to make it that way, but imagining that we'd be eating burgers, sausages, chicken, peameal bacon, eggs breakfast for the next two days camping - I thought better and made less guilt quiche. Wishful thinking. We were hungry and exhausted after putting up tent in heavy rain that after we had quiche, we fired up the grill and ate some more!!