I have slept at home one out of the last 44 days. Due to a combination of vacation, work travel, and sub-leasing I have done lots of eating – from over-salted microwaved mystery meat on Bolivian airlines to three course meals in Southern France – but not a lot of cooking. The exception to this trend was my annual excursion to Lake George over Memorial Day where 19 New York foodies spent the long weekend testing the culinary limits of a small fire pit designed to grill hot dogs for a family of five.
Divided into three cooking groups, we all took turns wowing the others with beef and chicken fajitas complete with homemade guacamole and warmed tortillas, mixed kebabs with spicy peppers and pitas, fresh feta, cucumber and red onion salad, and the ever popular breakfast burritos.
My favorite camp fire meal by far, however, is still blueberry and banana pancakes cooked in bacon grease. It’s not something I have tried to recreate at home and maybe that’s the beauty of it. The combination of gooey pancake batter, warm fruit and salty bacon eaten with a slightly dirty fork on an even dirtier plate has become for me the symbol of the beginning of summer.
Divided into three cooking groups, we all took turns wowing the others with beef and chicken fajitas complete with homemade guacamole and warmed tortillas, mixed kebabs with spicy peppers and pitas, fresh feta, cucumber and red onion salad, and the ever popular breakfast burritos.
My favorite camp fire meal by far, however, is still blueberry and banana pancakes cooked in bacon grease. It’s not something I have tried to recreate at home and maybe that’s the beauty of it. The combination of gooey pancake batter, warm fruit and salty bacon eaten with a slightly dirty fork on an even dirtier plate has become for me the symbol of the beginning of summer.
