This week camping in the extreme heat has had me thinking about the way we cook especially in the RV. Earlier this week Michael was grilling chicken wings outside on the propane grill and I was using the stove inside to saute zucchini and squash as a side dish. We have a thermometer in the RV to keep track of the temps – we put it in the line of sight of our camera when we leave the pups to run errands so we can keep an eye in case off any issues. When I had the stove on with the propane inside the temperature in the RV went up about 5 degrees. We knew how much the oven heated the RV but actually seeing the temperature change just in cooking a simple side dish was a bit of a surprise. This had me thinking about some of the tools we have gotten over the last year and a half to make life a bit more enjoyable.
One of the tools last year we bought a Ninja Foodi to not have to use the oven for some of our cooking. Last night in about 20 minutes time we made a homemade chicken pot pie with the saute, pressure cooker, and broil features on it. It didn’t heat up the RV as much as using the oven/stove combined that it would have required. We’ve also discovered you can pressure cook a pound or two of ground beef in about 5 minutes to thaw it out from frozen to use in cooking. The slow cooker feature doesn’t work as well as our crock pot one at the house and when we go on the road full time we’ll be bringing that one with us for things we want to prepare in it (stews and roasts mainly).
Another tool we got last year was an electric skillet. It’s been amazing to cook a variety of foods in. I can cook a package of bacon in no time without heating up the camper. You can also cook the eggs in there right afterwards. We’ve made a variety of foods in there and it’s a tool that can be used indoors and outdoors for cooking. I made taco meat this trip in it – didn’t need to heat up the RV. We’ve also made several batches of bacon, sausages, eggs etc for breakfasts and breakfast meals we prepped ahead of time.
My final tool for this blog – we’ll revisit this soon with more tool tips – is the ice maker. We don’t have a ton of counter space in our current RV however I do not begrudge the space that this ice maker uses. Not having ice trays that take too long to freeze in a very small freezer space is the best for us. We thought we were being smart in bringing this little ice maker in – until we joined some RV groups and discovered how many others feel the same way we do about them. When we pull in to a new site one of the first things I do is turn that on – by the time we’re done setting up we have a small batch of ice ready and waiting for us to use in our drinks.
GnomadicLife 