a peek inside the fishbowl

I can’t say for sure where the lure of camping comes from for me. Growing up, the only child of immigrant parents, I remember occasional walks in the woods and camping once or twice, but I don’t remember much about those times. I certainly wouldn’t classify my family growing up as “outdoorsy.”

For all intents and purposes one could assume that I’d dislike camping. After all, I really like hot showers, my couch, and ample access to electricity.

While we are camping we don’t have those things (although I should let it be known that I try to keep as clean as possible at all times) but once a year I will sacrifice hot showers for other things that I like even more. I REALLY like fresh air and scenic views. I like nature. I like the down-tempo and deliberate pace of camping. I like the taste of food cooked on an open fire (as evidenced by the camping donut recipe I posted yesterday)! I like the sound of the wind rustling the branches while I’m lying snug in my sleeping bag. I like being woken up by the lonely call of a loon. I like watching the mist rise on the lake.

I will gladly accept some sand in my shorts and perpetual bed-head in exchange for all these things.

There’s no doubt that camping is work – let’s take meal prep for example – but it’s a different kind of work. You’re preparing dinner with limited tools and without many of the small luxuries we surround ourselves with at home. But while I’m camping, and waiting for the fire to get hot enough for cooking or for the water to boil, I can’t help but stop and notice things around me, like the family of ruffled grouse making their way stealthily through the underbrush, a moth camouflaged against the tree bark, and patterns in the clouds.

Camping forces you slow down and take a breath or two. This is another thing I like about it.

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Going to Grundy Lake Provincial Park was Mark’s idea. We’ve had great success with many other provincial parks including Charleston Lake, Bon Echo, and Lake St. Peter, so I was happy to try out a new one. We ventured in this direction (a 6.5 hour drive towards Sudbury) because we’ve been quite taken with the landscape in these parts. It’s quintessentially Canadian. It’s where north meets south, and the meeting is commemorated with sparkling water and big sky, abundant rock and richly mixed forests.

The site we originally booked was in an area called Balsam. STAY AWAY from Balsam people! It looked great on paper (right on the water in a quieter area) but as soon as we descended we realized that we could see (and hear!) the relentless drone of the Trans-Canada highway. It was directly across the lake. We decided that tranquility was too important to give up so we drove back to the main gate to see if there were other spots available. A very nice lady checked her computer and marked down about a dozen unoccupied sites for us to look at.

You might assume that driving around the campground would be a nuisance but it was actually pretty exciting to shop our site around. We checked them all out and eventually settled on the best of the bunch: site #319 at the Poplar area. It was right on the water (a mere 24 steps to the beach!), a reasonable distance to the comfort station (read: hot showers and proper flush toilets), and close to a water station and a privy but not TOO close if you know what I mean. It was private and was large enough (and flat enough) to accommodate our monster tent.

And once you have the perfect spot, well, everything else just falls into place… right?

Coming up: a bit about the trails at Grundy Lake, a post about the amazing ride that was loaned to us for a week by Ford, and a couple more camping-type recipes. :)

I blog so that I can remember, and in that vein I am slowly gathering my thoughts about our recent camping trip to Grundy Lake Provincial Park. I wanted to share a few recipes that we cooked up while we were there. There are a couple I know some of you may want to try out yourselves, whether you belong to a camping family or not. :)

As soon as I spotted these campfire donuts I knew I had to make them. Ours turned out splendidly, although not nearly as pretty as the photo in the link above. Oh well. We were CAMPING after all, and the important thing to know is that these donuts taste SIMPLY AWESOME (and I’m not just saying that because everything tastes a hundred times better when eaten outdoors).

When these donuts are served with coffee it is MANNA FROM HEAVEN.

This really isn’t even a recipe – it is mere assembly – but I will jot it here anyway for your reference (and mine).

Recipe for camping donuts

You will need:

• a deep frying pan (a cast iron pan is great for this)
• oil for frying
• canned biscuits
• icing sugar or a mix of cinnamon/sugar

1) While the oil is heating up, cut holes in each biscuit using a sharp knife. This allows for even frying AND donut holes are fun to eat too.

2) Fry each donut until well-browned on both sides.

3) Toss with sugar, and eat them while they’re warm.

They were soooo good. In fact, I might even make them again at home. Oh my poor waistline…

I wanted to send a big helloooo and thank you to the fabulous bloggers who held down the fort while we were away on holiday. Please check out their posts (you can read them here) and their blogs too. Thanks again:

• Karie Dufour from Pub Patio Playdate
• Dave Atkinson from Tomato Transplants
• Delta Jones from justplaytoyrental.com
• Kamerine Gardam from The Life of K
• Jennifer Perlin from Kids In Kanata

I have so much to write (camping! giveaways! test drives of a new vehicle! recipes!) but today I wanted to share something else.

I read this post by Karen Green the other day with a sinky-feeling heart. How could I not. I’ve been there, in that same place. In fact, although our girls are older now I’m still kinda there.

“We have days of enjoyment and moments of pure glee and a few snippets of relaxation, but even in the midst of those, I am scrambling for purchase on a constantly churning sea of obligations.”

Sigh.

I like to think that I’m providing my kids a good example of what it means to be a working mother. I’m a parent who is doing the kind of work (fun, creative, fulfilling work) that pays some bills while working from home. I hope that I am showing our daughters that it’s possible to have meaningful and satisfying work and balance it with life as a family.

This summer is a little different because our eldest is gainfully employed (which is frankly kind of amazing, but in the interest of her privacy I am refraining from details) and so every day I’ve been working in the mornings while the youngest one keeps herself occupied. There’s always a promise of things we’ll do later, and although I do my best to follow through, but I often catch myself saying annoying things like “just give me five more minutes” and “give me a second I just need to check my email.”

Now that we’re into the final weeks of summer vacation I decided that it might be a good idea to shake things up a little and, ahem, assign my kid various mini-projects to do independently (keyword being INDEPENDENTLY here) while I work. Who knows, maybe she’ll learn something, and maybe some of these ideas will work for you?

First up: squeezing lemons.

This doesn’t sound very exciting, but it is. We did this ages ago with a bag of oranges and it was a pretty neat exercise. I was walking by a rack of aging produce at the grocery store and I remembered what a neat idea it was. I grabbed a bag of lemons (50% off!) and decided on the spot that we’d have to do this again.

There were nine lemons in the bag. Here’s the question we asked ourselves: how much juice can you squeeze out of nine lemons?

Any guesses? Well…

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