camping

Camp Cookery - Jambalaya

in

jambalaya

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 pounds sliced sausage

1 pound shrimp

1/2 onion diced

1 cup diced bell pepper

1 cup diced celery

1/2 teaspoon cajun seasoning

1 cup rice

14.5 once can diced tomato

1/4 teaspoon diced thyme

2 cups chicken broth

bay leaves

first things first, i totally disregarded the portioning i had planned on using. this is one pot meal cooked in a cast iron dutch oven, it is very forgiving, and when cooking for a big group; the more food the better.

start your fire well before you plan on cooking, you'll need a solid bed of hot coals to get this dish cooked. it'll take a while for the fire to get to this point so i used that time to start chopping the veggies and slicing the sausage. when the coals are ready place the dutch oven on a stable portion and pour in enough olive oil to coat the bottom. 

once the oil is good and hot throw in your sliced sausage and let that cook for two minutes or so. next up, toss in celery, onion, bell pepper and cajun seasoning.

cook until the vegetables become tender. then goes the rice, tomatoes, garlic, bay leaves, thyme and chicken broth.

the only issue i ran into was at this point was needing to constantly add more chicken broth while the dish cooked. whether it was because i payed no attention to the amount of ingredients i threw in or because the fire was hotter than it should have been, i'm not sure. either way, constant stirring and tasting will let you know if more liquid is needed or not. at this point everything is cooked so i was just waiting on the rice. 

when the rice seems just about done (ten minutes for me) throw in the shrimp, cover and let cook for an additional two minutes. that's it, pull that sucker off the fire, remove the bay leaves and serve!

lessons learned: wash the oven immediately, with the libations flowing i neglected to clean it right after cooking. i spent a fun hour the next evening scraping caked on jambalaya off the bottom of the cast iron.

*sure is nice being on the other side of the camera sometimes. big thanks to lauren simpson for the bulk of these shots(click for portfolio)*

Llano River, Texas.

for my twenty seventh birthday i had plans of heading down to the us/mexico border by my lonesome for a little kayak overnighter. on my way to pick up the rental car for the trip i feel my phone buzz, "come out to llano tonight." after an internal back and forth, and another text reading "del rio will always be there, we won't always be in llano." i decided it would be better to spend my birthday with good friends rather than by myself. 

this new year was started with a lot of laughs under a bright full moon and a sunrise swim in the llano river. i'm extremely thankful i decided against the solo trip, as i couldn't have asked for a better time with a better group of folks.

i've always thought of myself as a person who liked solitude, and after the divorce i had grand visions of solo road trips and camping under the stars alone. i do still long for that feeling, but as i continue to grow i find that sharing my time with old and new friends helps me better experience the places i go and the things i do.

"happiness is only real when shared." christopher mccandless

Great Sand Dunes National Park & Misc. CO

in
last saturday night i say to my friend ryan (@brotherstories) 
"we should go on a trip next weekend."
"yea we should, where do you want to go?"
"i don't care lets just drive as far as we can."
"want to go to colorado?"
"hell yes"
and that was it, we had no plan on where we wanted to go or what we wanted to see. we had a day that we had to be back by, but we ended up blowing that off anyways. we just loaded up the car and drove.

a whirlwind trip, four days, two thousand miles, new friends and familiar faces, a night atop a glacier under the stars, beer, whiskey and good tunes. i've never had a vacation like the one i had this past weekend. we crammed a weeks worth of fun into three days, all while running on a few hours of sleep a night.  

we saw some amazing sights, the great sand dunes, red rocks amphitheater, st. marys glacier, chautauqua park and the beautiful cities of denver and boulder. but what made the trip were the people we met and shared our days and nights with. stories from the heart about love and life, to ridiculous arguments about trash bag ponchos, they all made for the most memorable weekend.

on the long drive home i turned to my friend and asked him if he ever felt like everything in life was just perfect, like you're almost searching for something to go wrong or be worried about because everything just feels right. i've felt this before, although it's been a while. a little over a year ago when i was finally getting better after a very serious illness i wrote this, "i have always been what you would call a glass half full kind of person, now that glass is always full and i couldn't ask for anything else. life is good, life is fun, life is easy." i feel that again and i couldn't help but sit in the passengers seat and shake my head in disbelief, everything in my life just seems to be in a perfect balance.