Darren's RV Adventures

The planning for most of our trips is pretty lax.  I usually plot the travel path, pick the camp sites, make the reservations, and do the driving.  At least on the way out.  After that, it's like a goat rodeo. Our last trip was to Rhode Island to see our son.  Along the way we stopped in Pennsylvania for the Renaissance Faire at historic Mount Hope.  The plan was loose, we were taking a week off from work capped by weekends on each side.  We drove up to PA on Saturday and would attend the Faire on Sunday, then continue North the following day. It was August, so by the time we got to the campground and got unhooked and set up I was a sweaty mess.  I asked The Wife where the suitcase was, after not finding it in any of the three places it normally ends up.  This began one of those conversations you see on situation comedies.  And then the 2 hour drive back home to get it. We had packed it.  Made sure to put the electric toothbrushes,...

What is Sous Vide? Sous vide (pronounced sue-veed) , means “under vacuum” in French, and refers to the process of vacuum-sealing food in a bag, then cooking it to a very precise temperature in a water bath.  It sounds complicated, but it's really simple and the tools for this have become very affordable. How does this relate to RV life? My RV adventures are not those of a full time RVer, but the same techniques would certainly work.  I've only recently become exposed to sous vide cooking, but it's already made our camping easier.  You can cook a surprising number of things using this method, and because the majority of the items are already vacuum sealed, once they're cooked they can be stored in the refrigerator until you need them later. Caveat. The sous vide cooker and cooking process require electricity.  I keep forgetting to plug my Kill-O-Watt meter in to see just how much it uses.  This might not be suitable for boondocking (dry camping) beca...

How much stuff do you need? This is our fourth season of owning a camper, but only our third season of using it.  We didn't get out at all in 2015 because we were house shopping and moving.  So this year we were hoping to go on a few more trips, which warranted rethinking what we have packed in the camper. The first year we went out I know I over packed the cabinets with food stuffs.  It's a bad habit I have so this year we made a conscious effort to go through everything we had and make sure it was there for a reason. Space isn't a serious issue for us.  We're not full timers, and it's only the two of us, so we have plenty of room. Our Rig Kitchen Kit. Pots and pans we managed to do well on.  I do as much cooking as I can on the grill (hoping to cook more over open fires this year) so our pots and pan needs are pretty low.  I have a cast iron skillet that does most of the breakfast cooking, A cake pan, a pie pan, a 2 quart sauce pan with a ...