Best Smore Recipe

A long while back I wrote a post talking about how important family traditions are for our children. I also wrote that I would be sharing some of the little things that we do...as Rivests that make life a little more special...so today I will be sharing some thoughts.....

Quite a while ago I was sitting with a group of women in a meeting and they had a conversation starter type question (this I usually don't need help with!) and it went something like this, 'what was the most memorable summer vacation that you have as a child?' and around the circle there was one answer that kept coming up: camping. This could have been tenting but most mentioned camp fires and smores...rainy days, cold lakes, fishing and boating...and an upturned canoe. Different styles and different places...same conclusion-great memories.

So I went home to my dear unsuspecting husband...and asked him what his very best family vacation was...you guessed it...camping in a van and tent for a month...going across Canada with his family. We talked about what kind of family vacations we wanted for our children....what kind of memories we wanted to create for our very young family of four at that time. Camping seemed like a good idea so we ended up buying a trailer...because a wet tent just didn't seem to be the way I wanted to create memories (even though I had amazing memories freezing in a tent up at Lake Superior as a child), we since have made many memories camping with our little family.

A weekend at camp usually involves campfires every night, smores and puggy pies and lots of friends and family, swimming and Sea Dooing, fishing off the rocks, and many trips to grandmas and grandpas, nana and papas and the aunts and uncles who are camping with us at the time. There is always room for more at the campfire and sometimes we coax grandpa or uncle fred to take out the guitar so we can sing. But what I like most of all is the quiet time we spend together playing cards during the day, laying on the hammock for a rest or reading a book or two in the screen room.

Food is a big part of a good rivest camping weekend....bacon and french toast..grilled chicken or steak....and the campfire fare: bi bits: roasted hot dogs sliced to make the ends curl like an octopus....smores: For the VERY BEST smores that you ever could imagine...try this. Take a celebration cookie:the cookie that has a milk chocolate layer on the shortbread....and use this in place of the chocolate piece....it works much better and you get a nice even layer of chocolate....yum!

Or puggy pies: you take 2 slices of buttered bread and put a scoop of pie filling in the center and toast them over the fire in a pie iron.....or if you want to make dinner puggy pies, you put out a smorgasbord of fillings: taco and cheese, pizza sauce, cheese and pepperoni, or ham and cheese, roast beef and cheddar....you get the idea...and you can serve a full dinner over the fire.

If you really want to take the puggie pies to the next level...place a buttered flour tortilla on the pie iron and for the filling put a small slice of baked cheesecake...and two squares of caramilk chocolate bar...grill over fire and then sprinkle with icing sugar.....yum!

Well as you can see we love everything about camp...and our kids have made lots of memories...especially the games that grandpa has taught them...kick the can in the dark...stick em up...and I can't help smiling while remembering all of the fun we have had together as a family. Maybe one day when asked what the best vacation they had as a family,

my children will be hard pressed to find just one...