The beginning of another houseboating adventure and a new shrimp recipe

Delicious shrimp and apples just waiting to be eaten

This year’s houseboating adventures didn’t begin exactly as planned but this time I’m actually okay with it. We had hoped to leave home later in the afternoon on Saturday but the wind began to blow and we were tired. I was even thankful when Mike said maybe we wouldn’t leave until the next morning. By evening there was a severe storm watch for just north of us that would possible include Temagami with predictions of winds up to 90km/h! Yes, I was definitely thankful to still be at home.

The only awkward thing about not leaving as planned was that all of our clothes and food were already loaded up. So we had supper on the houseboat while it was parked at the dock and pretended that we were already at our first stop.

My menu for the week includes a few new things to try on the barbecue. We all love cooking and trying new things. Abby especially loves to measure and mix. 

A delicious meal that we all agreed we'd eat again!

My first supper consisted of something that could be made very quickly on the barbecue since we probably wouldn’t arrive at our first campsite until it was really past suppertime. I was originally going to fry shrimp to go with rice and asparagus but then I came across this recipe in a gluten free e-mailing that I get and I had to try it. We all agreed that it was a make again recipe and I wished I had more apples to go with the shrimp that were still in the freezer at home. It was fast. It was easy. It was delicious. And who doesn’t love shrimp? I didn’t use jumbo shrimp but I always pick up the biggish sized shrimp when they go on sale so we have them on hand. Since we were still at home I cooked the rice in our rice cooker. I just can’t seem to get the hang of cooking good rice in a pot. Besides it’s so nice to just turn it on and forget about it.

After supper we pretended we didn’t have anything else to do and just went swimming for a bit. Much to Abby’s dismay we decided to sleep in our house just in case the weather network's predictions were correct and the winds decided to get up even higher and loads of hail decided to fall. In the end the weather network was wrong once again and the storm didn’t happen at all. We woke up to a beautifully calm, cool morning with the wind behind us as we set out for our houseboat vacation.

Grilled Shrimp and Apple Skewers

3 TB honey
3 TB olive oil
1 TB fresh basil
1 TB strawberry jam
1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1 clove garlic, minced
2 TB red wine vinegar
1 TB lemon juice
2 tsp. white sugar
2 gala apples
16 jumbo shrimp
Refrigerate the shrimp in marinade 30 minutes. Skewer shrimp and apples alternately. Barbecue 5 minutes per side on medium-high, basting with remaining marinade.

Steak and potatoes

Honestly, I don’t think this meal is all that interesting. In fact I think it’s quite common but Mike asked if I wanted pictures taken because he was so excited to enjoy it. 
Now we don’t have steak every day. That’s not why I think it’s common. It’s just that there’s no recipe. Anyone could make it. Lots of people do make it. But apparently steak, foil potatoes with bacon, onion and Italian seasoning and skewered mushrooms are worth writing about. This spring beef loins were on sale for less than half price so I picked one up and cut it into steaks and froze them. Every time we have steak Mike tells me I should have bought more. But I’m still learning how to buy meat and can never remember what is tender and what isn’t. Growing up on a farm has lots of advantages and eating the meat you raise is certainly one of them. The disadvantage is that you eat what’s in the freezer. You don’t think about what kind of steak it is. You don’t check to see if you’re buying one that’s nicely marbled. It’s just there. You thaw it and you eat it. This is not a complaint. I am so thankful to have been raised on a farm. It’s just that now I need to buy meat and it always seems so expensive and I’m still learning how to choose a good cut.

The more interesting part of this meal is that we baked cookies on the barbecue to finish it off. We don’t eat a lot of dessert but I want to try a few different things on the barbecue while we’re on vacation so we will be eating dessert most nights much to everyone’s excitement. Before I got pregnant with Abby I pretty much cut sugar out of my diet and I felt sooo much better. I’m careful about how much sugar Abby has too. What this means is that my choice of cookie may not be terribly appealing to anyone who eats Oreos on a regular basis. There is a recipe called healthy cookies going around Facebook and Pinterest. I tried one version that called for mashed banana, oats and chocolate chips and it was surprisingly good. I used quinoa flakes in that recipe and the substitution worked very well.

Today’s recipe has a bit more to it but still has no oil, gluten, sugar, eggs or raising agents. I bought some gluten free oats to try. Abby and I had lots of fun mixing them up. Abby had even more fun ‘having a good taste’.

My cookie sheet is really a bit big for this barbecue so I turned it halfway through cooking and they didn’t seem to get burnt. I preheated the barbecue to 350 using the burner on only one side. I lined the sheet with parchment paper instead of oil because I thought oil might make the cookies more likely to burn. Everyone seemed to think they turned out very well and quite a few of them disappeared before the night was over. I found this was a very forgiving recipe to make on the barbecue. It handled some variation in the temperature without burning or drying out. I had hoped to use my insulated cookie sheet but it ended up being much too big for the houseboat barbecue.

Healthy Cookie

3 ripe bananas, mashed

1/3 cup apple sauce

1 tsp. vanilla

3 cups of rolled oats

1/4 cup almond milk

1/2 cup raisins

1 tsp. cinnamon

Mix all the ingredients together and drop them by tablespoonful onto greased or parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.

Beer can chicken and other yummy things

Tonight’s meal consisted of beer can chicken, barbecued cabbage with bacon, squash and bean salad. I always love squash with my roasted chicken and tonight was no exception. I didn’t do as well at having everything ready at the same time and Abby and I were both feeling very tired and a bit grumpy so we ate things as they were cooked since Mike was out fishing and had said not to wait for him.

Carefully measuring the spices.

The beer can chicken turned out great. We borrowed a chicken roaster and a can of beer from Mike’s parents. This is not your traditional roasting pan but something that props the chicken up in a ‘standing’ position. It has a tray for catching the drips and holds a beer can. I had one little problem in cooking with it - the chicken was too tall for the barbecue. Being tired and not having my problem solving husband here to help me I put a metal bowl in the barbecue to prop the lid up a bit and tried a couple of things to keep the heat from escaping but none of them worked well. The chicken roaster's instructions actually say to make sure the lid on the barbecue is fully closed. As best as I can tell the only side effect was that it took extra propane to cook supper. I asked Mike about it when he came in and he thought he had taken the rack out of the barbecue on one side and set the chicken directly on the flavour wave plate when he'd done it before. I'm sure that would have worked perfectly.

Beer Roasted Chicken

1 whole chicken 2-4 lbs

1 can of beer

2-3 cloves of fresh garlic

poultry seasoning, fresh or dried rosemary, salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the grill on medium heat.

Rub the outside of the skin with poultry seasoning, lightly covering the entire bird. Add pepper and salt to taste.

Empty 1/2 of the can of beer into a glass or measuring cup.

Place 2-3 small cloves of garlic in beer can along with 2-3 sprigs of fresh rosemary.

Place the beer can on the base and assemble the large holders around the can of beer.

Place the chicken on the assembled roaster and if desired add the leftover beer and any additional garlic and rosemary to suit to the pan of the roaster.

Place the roaster on the grill. Cook the bird 18-20 minutes per pound or until the breast meat has reached an internal temperature of 170C.

The chicken turned out very moist and tender with lots of great flavour. Definitely another make again recipe.

Dinner time!

I cooked the squash in a metal bowl covered with foil but next time I would just wrap it in foil. The bowl seemed to make it take a lot longer to cook. It was the last thing ready to be eaten.

I have made this cabbage recipe once before but with a larger cabbage. The flavour is great and this time it was more thoroughly cooked.

Barbecued Cabbage

1 head cabbage

4 slices bacon

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp. pepper

4 tsp. butter (I didn’t bother with this - there’s enough fat in the bacon in my opinion)

Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage. Divide into four sections, removing the core. Place each on a piece of foil big enough to wrap them in. Add 1 slice of bacon, 1/4 of seasoning mix and 1 tsp. butter if desired.

Preheat oven to medium heat and bake 40 minutes, turning twice.

I let Abby have a real treat and we made S’mores on the barbecue. I know you’re supposed to have a campfire to do that but we just never seem to get around to making one. She loves all of the ingredients and was excited to watch the marshmallows puff up on the barbecue. I set the crackers directly on the grill but it would probably be better if they were on a tray or foil as we almost lost Abby’s marshmallows on the grill and some of my chocolate melted onto the grill. It seemed like such a shame to not be able to lick it off.

Mmmm... chocolatey, marshmallowy goodness.