The wife and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary this past weekend with a little camping trip to Memorial Park in Pescadero, California. Part of the San Mateo County Regional Parks system it's the only one with campsites open during winter. Our anniversary happens to coincide with MLK, Jr. Day and virtually all of the sites on the Azalea Loop were occupied on Saturday night, but the 108 sites are well placed and spaced out so it didn't seem too crowded.
On the way down from San Francisco we stopped off at the Princeton Seafood Company to pick up some fresh prawns and crab meat to put in the jambalaya we were planning to make for dinner that night. Unfortunately they were out of cleaned crab meat and we didn't feel like picking it ourselves so we got a jar of oysters instead. Once camp was all set up and I was ready to get down to cooking we discovered that Deb had forgot to pack the rice so our jambalaya got a change up to gumbo! Got a fire going and got the dutch oven heated up, then set about browning the chicken and andouille followed by the veg trinity. Next came the roux. I had recently seen Emeril make gumbo on TV and his roux was a cup and a half each of oil and flour. Unfortunately I must have dozed off when he set the roux aside and only used a fraction of the batch in the gumbo pot! And so our batch of gumbo turned out to be rather THICK despite addition of all available liquid in our camp... Ended up having grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner that night while thinking about how I was going to fix the gumbo the next day!!
Sunday we made a run to town and picked up a couple of cans of chicken stock as well as some rice because you are supposed to have a couple of spoonfuls in a proper bowl of gumbo. I then removed about half of the super-thick gravy from the dutch oven and packed it up for later, added two cans of chicken stock and about 4 cans of water and finally our gumbo was about the right consistency!
The fix must have worked pretty well because that night we had three raccoons skulking around the perimeter of our campsite looking for an opportunity to sneak into our food. A couple of the 'coons even got into a fist fight over who had first dibs on our chow! Fortunately I was able to persuade them that there was no easy opportunity at our camp and they eventually moved on to an easier mark...
Sunday the campground really cleared out and I think only four other sites were occupied that night, we practically had the place to ourselves. We had to pack up and head home on Monday, but our campsite neighbor was staying on and would have the whole park to himself during the week. Even the ranger packed up and split mid-day!
And there you have it, that's my report and I'm sticking to it.
