Grandpa went to Hunt Camp

Please bare with me as I'm still in Grandma mode:

It was a rather different sort of week last week. My husband aka Grandpa left for hunt camp on Saturday which meant I aka Grandma helped get the food ready. I will state right off the bat that the food choices were the guys and not just my husband's. Anyway he took the digital camera with him so while I had a camera it was not in a convenient form to post so a second digital is in the works but this explains somewhat the lack of posts last week. Grandma was going to enjoy a whole week of solitude spent in her pj's but decided to visit the kids instead.

Lasagne

Grandpa always sweet talks Grandma into making goodies for their food supplies. Friday, I assembled two large trays of lasagne using my homemade spaghetti sauce with meat. The larger tray to the left was for the guys while the smaller tray I planned on taking up to the kids for Tuesday night's dinner.

Lasagna freezes nicely so I often make up several trays at a time for the freezer. I always add cottage cheese to the first layer of lasagna and most times I add a thin layer of spinach. I do not put sausage in my meat sauce or lasagna. Other than that the lasagna is assembled as follows:

• layer meat sauce
• layer cooked lasagna noodles
• layer of shredded cheeses
• repeat layers ending with a cheese layer

Breadsticks

Years ago we went to a restaurant that served ranch sticks. Grandpa fell in love with them so Grandma set out to make them at home. This recipe needs soft breadsticks that at one time were easy to find in the grocery stores but have been quite difficult to find in recent years so I make my own. I use my standard pizza dough recipe made with a KitchenAid® stand mixer. When the dough is proofed, I form into thin strands for the bread sticks. I allow the strands to double in size then bake at 350ºF until golden brown. These breadsticks can be brushed with butter then sprinkled with Parmesan cheese for dipping or they can be made into ranch sticks. I will post more on the ranch sticks and how to make them along with a picture shortly.

Coolers

In the wee hours of Saturday morning Grandma helped Grandpa pack the coolers as well as three large bins of food that didn't need to be kept cold. I seriously shuddered at some of the food but that could be because the furnace hadn't kicked in yet so the kitchen was cool. Finally all the food and the rest of Grandpa's gear was packed in the truck of a friend. I waved goodbye while sipping on the Timmy's double double our friend had brought marveling for a very brief moment at the silence.

Then it dawned on me that I had no digital camera! Stay tuned...