Cooking Camp Breakfast

One thing I do at camp which I never do at home is cook a full English breakfast. Yes, it's insane, at home I have all the equipment set up for an easy life but at camp I do it all on this little Trangia stove…

With the set you get 2 saucepans, a frying pan and we have a kettle too and it all fits inside each other. The stove runs on meths and it really light. I first started using one when I was in the scouts and we did a lot of hiking and mountaineering, I have to say, I love the little thing!

Now, to cook a full English, there is a lot of skill required…

First prepare everything so it's ready to go as soon as you light the stove. We usually have sausage, bacon, baked beans and scrambled egg. The baked beans are in the largest pan, the eggs are beaten and the sausage and bacon are ready. You also need to get your plates and cutlery ready before you start cooking, there is no temp control on the stove so you start there is no stopping!

1. Light the stove, cook the sausages first - they take the longest to cook and retain their heat the longest. When they are done, put them in the small pan and place the big pan with the baked beans in it over the top, to keep the sausages warm. 

2. Bacon, sometimes I add the bacon add the bacon to the sausages, depends on the space. When the bacon is done put them in the pan with the sausages and put the beans on the stove. Put the frying pan over the sausage pan as a lid and pour in the eggs.

3. Cooked the beans, when they are done, take them off the heat and put the frying pan back on the stove to cook the eggs. 

4. Whilst the eggs are cooking dish out everything else. Finally add the eggs to the plate. Put the kettle on the stove.

5. Sit down and enjoy your breakfast!

Camping Shenanigans…

We headed to the mountains in Gunma, near Karuizawa for this Golden Weeks camp and one of our bilingual playgroup families came with us. Sunday the weather was nice so we went to Oni-oshi-dashi which is a volcanic stone magma park.

The park was formed in 1783 when Mount Asama erupted, Oni in Japanese in devil and when the eruption happened the locals thought it was the devil throwing out the rocks from the mountain. Hard to believe these days…

It is a weird type of landscape, with large of strange shaped clumps of rock all around…

Two cheeky little devils…

After lunch Ebi-kun went fishing with N-kun, between them they caught 11 fish, it was the first time Ebi-kun had been and he was so excited that he had caught the biggest - not sure why N-kun is looking so glum (possible fed up of Ebi-kun and his big fish story!)

The people at the fishing place prepared the fish then N-kuns dad BBQ'd them. You know how much I love fish (not!) and I can honestly say that it absolutely stank! Ebi-kun loved it though and being aware of how food ends up on his plate is really important.

Dinner was more BBQ, admittedly after all that fish there wasn't much space for anything else, except…

 Giant marshmallows!

We also managed to squeeze in some educational stuff. He wanted to know how torches work - the type you would use if you were suddenly transported back to the middle ages, not the electric variety. A long stick, toilet roll and cooking oil did the trick! 

After all that we had a very tired little fella! It was REALLY bloody cold up there at night, so we ended up zipping the two adult sleeping bags together, and all getting in, Ebi-kun was in his sleeping bag in a bag! And we had extra blankets but it was still cold! Decent sleeping bags are going on my wish list for next year!

Officially The Best Weekend Ever!

It was a three day holiday last weekend so we went camping. We went to a site we have been to before, Nagurkankou near Hanno. it is in a lovely spot and has a beautiful river running through it. This is the view from  the tent...

At the site there is the 'free camp' which mean you can pitch your tent anywhere in the designated area, this is where we went, there was only one other group the first night and we had the whole place to ourselves the second night. There are also cabins which usually get booked out and the auto camp where you park next to your tent, and yes it is convenient but it is like camping in the car park! The downside to the free camp is that you have to cart all your gear over a dodgy bridge and up some steps, that said, it is worth it.

We had friends come out for Saturday and they left late Sunday, Ebi-kun loved having his mates there, there were lots of water fights...

Making 'onsens' and exploring, Saturday night they all slept out under the stars, by dinner time Sunday, Ebi-kun was exhausted and just kept begging to go to bed!

Most of the river is paddling depth but there are a few deeper spots which is where the kids practice swimming, there are also fish and tadpoles to be caught - yes, we have more pets now!

The water is sparkling clear, it also works perfectly for me, I burn very easily and get sunstroke but here I can stay in the shade and keep an eye on the kids, there is always part of the river which is shady.

We came to this spot 2 years ago, Ebi-kun wouldn't jump off the rock without holding daddy's hand then, this time he was all for it. I was using Ebi-kun camera because it is waterproof but I haven't figured out all the settings yet, this was the best water jump pic I got.

Saturday the place was pretty quiet but Sunday, we were invaded by day trippers, that said, there was still plenty of space to play and it tended to the other part of the river, near the auto-camp which was really busy. Lot of drunken 'young folk' but by 5 o'clock the day trippers had all gone home and we had the run of the place again.

One of the things that I love about this site is that there is NO entertainment for the kids other than nature, they have to find their own entertainment, the kids were totally happy to spend all day messing around in the river. It was great to see kids just being kids, no ipads, DS or any other gadgets, the only one I saw was a grumpy looking mom with a smartphone watching a show or film, completely ignoring her kids, so very sad.

Perfect spot for practicing a bit of yoga....

Other than lugging all the camp equipment to the top of the campsite, the only other downside is that the supermarket is miles away, so you have to be super organised (good job that is my super-power!) Ebi-kun declared that it was The Best Weekend EVER. 

Great weekend, great company, can't wait to do it all again.

Golden Week Camp PT 2 - German beer farm

When we go camping we usually take a day trip or two to a local event or attraction. My husband - a lover of beer discovered that there was a German Beer Farm not too far from where we were staying, so guess where we went?

 The place did look like a German market place and they had several beers and different food for sale.

It was a strange kind of 'farm' we had a go on the pedal boats - it is now clear why 7 years olds are not allowed to drive cars! We also tried our hand at archery and watched the sheep dog demonstration.

It was fairly busy but not depressingly so, we had some German sausages and potatoes for lunch, non of us were hungry enough to warrant going to the restaurant.

Ebi-kun also had fun on the big slide, you pay for 20 minutes of slip sliding fun. We realised that there were loads of other 'farms' dotted around, the Da Vinci farm sounded interesting, we will have to head back this way to find out about the others!

Orange Camp Cakes - recipe

I saw this idea on pinterest and thought it looked fun!

What you need:
1 orange per person
cake mix (I used hotcake mix & cocoa powder) + whatever you need to make the cake mix
Foil
Hot BBQ

First, fit the orange on a flat surface, it should stand up better one way, cut the top off. Scrap the insides out of the orange - you can eat this as you go if you like. Place each orange on a piece of foil.

Follow the instructions for the cake mix, then spoon the mix into the orange, leave some space at the top for the cake to rise. Pop the lid back on they wrap with foil.

Place the oranges in the hot embers, we left ours for about 30 minutes, you might need to turn them round half way through.

Unwrap and check that the cake is cooked..

And eat! Our oranges were really sweet but after they were cooked they became quite bitter which meant the end result was rather like marmalade cake, it wasn't very chocolatey either, next time I think I will try a dollop of nutella in there! Made a change from smores and baked bananas anyway :)

Golden Week Camp PT 1

We headed up to Gunma for this years Golden Week camp, it is a campsite we have been to before but we were there in the autumn last time. It is a nice site, well designed, clean toilets! There is no onsen or shower but they give you discount tickets for a local onsen. 

The only time we eat a full English breakfast is when we are at camp, I have a trangia stove which I LOVE (I used to have one back my scouting days, it is such a versatile little stove) and I have the whole full breakfast down to perfect now!

This Ebi-kun having his hobbit style seconds out in the morning sun. We were blessed with beautiful weather although it was COLD at night and we really need to get something warmer than the light weight sleeping bags that we have got at the moment.

The campsite has a good playground for the kids and on the last day (why do they always wait until the last day?) he made friends with some kids two tents down and they went to play there together.

Ebi-kun will probably say that learning to use a knife was the highlight of the trip, he is quite sensible for a kid but still a child so he is only allowed to use it with supervision for now, until we are happy that he really knows how to handle it properly.

The main drawback for this site is that the nearest supermarket is well, a glorified convenience store and the nearest big supermarket is about 40 minutes drive away. So even if you just want to hang out at the campsite all day, you still need to take a long drive out to get supplies. We combined it with a trip to the onsen. We got there when it opened but it was already busy - other campers with the same idea! Usually at an onsen there is a row of seats and showers for washing before you soak in the bath, because it was busy, all the indoor showers were busy so I was forced to use the ones in the garden area Brrrrr. 

Sunsets, beers and BBQ's, that's what it is all about! 

and of course roasted marshmallows or smores! can't wait until the next camp!

Chichibu and some randomness...

Often when people come to visit Japan they do so on a short time frame so they only get to see the big cities. Tokyo is one massive urban sprawl so I like to try and show our visitors what Japan is like outside of the city! Something like 80% of Japan is covered in thick forest and is really green. This is the area we were camping in, I took the pictures from the dam.

Not the best picture, but I love this tunnel! It was like being swallowed by a dragon, we thought the other end should have been decorated as a dragons bum lol. But I suppose that would be weird driving into it!

Ebi-kun's camp highlight was having a real fire. Not many of the campsites allow you light real fires but here it was encouraged, so we cooked dinner on the open fire. Nothing fancy, we skewered sausages - the best sausages Ebi-kun has EVER had apparently! I also did veg in foil, just chopped up veg then sprinkle on a cuppa soup and add a lithe water, wrap up and put in the hot embers. Yum. It did get a bit chilly at night so it was good to to have the fire. Of course we had to finish with s'mores, this time we used chocolate digestives and marshmallows, worked a lot better.

And a couple of random pictures, first is the smallest fire truck ever! It did have a hose and ladder on the back, just about Ebi-kun's size.

Plus a random t-shirt, if you know what this means, leave me a comment, I haven't a clue!

What do you think this is built with?

We stayed at Sainokuni Camp Site, which was a rather interesting place.  The actual campsite is about 30 minutes drive from Chichibu town, up in the mountains. I was so intrigued by the main building, coming up the driveway I couldn't make out what it was made of, when I got up close I realised it was cans!

That big window at the top is the bathroom, we didn't use it because we went to the onsen and now I am kicking myself for not sneaking in to have a look! All the campers' burnable rubbish (garbage) is collected and burned and that is what heats the water for the bath.

The bottom row of windows are car door windows and the middle row are windscreens from cars! The chap who runs this place obviously doesn't let things go to waste. 

I am not totally convinced it is safe mind you! But it is pretty cool. The camp bloke also bought out a Union Jack since he had a foreign guest, apparently he has had up to 7 different countries flags at one time. Both him and his wife were really friendly, they also had chickens and took Ebi-kun and a couple of other kids to go and see a chick that had been born that day.

They also had a fish pond where you could buy bags of fish food, they had carp and rainbow trout.

Ebi-kun's favourite bit was the rabbits. There was a large pen but it was sectioned so part of it the kids couldn't get to it but the rabbits could come and go. This seemed to work well because any kids that were a bit rough with the rabbits, the rabbits would run off to the kid free zone! The campers were encouraged to save their raw scraps and anything suitable to fee to the rabbits. It did make me wonder if these were being fattened up for winter stew.

I think we will probably go back to this site sometime, maybe when it is warmer so we can play in the river too. We had weird weather all weekend, from really heavy rain to beautiful sunshine. Luckily the rain didn't get in the way of our plans, just made everything damp! I got Ebi-kun a Bear Grylls book, so he was quoting 'What Bear would do' all weekend.

Sadly, now I have a pile of laundry a mountain high, I'm sure that doesn't happen when you stay in a posh hotel!