Dinner by Campfire: Pepperoni Pudgy Pies

HUMP DAAAAY!  Gosh I love a short week!

On top of it being a short week, it's also my birthday week! Tonight I'm planning to make up some sort of birthday treat to bring into work tomorrow. It will be my first time baking something vegan AND gluten free. Any positive thoughts you can send my way will be appreciated. Right now I'm thinking some sort of banana muffin with chocolate chips.

In the meantime, I wanted to share my favorite creation from the weekend:

Pepperoni Pudgy Pies!

It's a similar process as my Campfire Cinnamon Rolls with a few extra steps. These delicious pies reminded me of the Hot Pockets of my youth. Ahh...nostalgia. Our pies were vegan and turned out great. I've listed the brands we used, but feel free to use whatever products you prefer.

What You'll Need:
1 roll of pre-made crescent rolls
Tomato sauce
Daiya mozzarella shreads
Tofurkey pepperoni
Earth Balance Butter
Garlic Powder
Italian Seasonings
Non-stick Cooking Spray
Pudgey Pie Iron

1.) Prepare the Crust Spray your pie iron with non-stick cooking spray. Unroll the crescent roll dough. Break apart and stretch the dough to roughly the size of your pie iron. We found that two crescent triangles fit one side of our double wide iron almost perfectly after a little stretching. Try to make sure you don't have any holes in the dough.

Our pie iron was already hot from the fire and had to stay off the table during prep.

2.) Add the Filling: First add some tomato sauce. 3-4 Tbs. seemed about right four our pies. Remember that you can always dip the finished pie in more sauce later. Then add the cheese in an even layer as you would on top of a pizza. Finally top with pepperonis or whatever other toppings you'd like.

Also get a nice hamstring stretch in :)

3.) Cover with the Top Crust: Place a similar sized piece of crescent dough on top of your pie. Gently press down the edges to seal. The dough will rise and will seal on its own pretty nicely so don't get too OCD on the pressing part. Spread a thin layer of butter on top of the crust. Then sprinkle with garlic powder and Italian seasonings. You could also add a little sprinkle of parmesan cheese on top for any of the cheese lovers out there.

If your butter is too hard to spread, set it by the fire for a bit to melt it.

4.) Cook: Close up your pie iron and cook over the campfire for 4-5 minutes on each side. Remove from the fire once the crust is golden brown. Plate your pie and enjoy!

Happy hubby :)

Notes: 

The sky is really the limit when it comes to fillings. Anything that works on a pizza will be delicious. You could use a cheddar or american style cheese and make more of a grilled cheese pie. Or you could do a sweet pie with chocolate, pie filling, or cinnamon and sugar.

After making these last weekend I have two words of advice: First, make sure you have enough crescent roll dough. One roll made 2 double pies for us, which was a pretty good amount of food for two adults. Second, try to work quickly and keep the dough cold. The dough will get very, very sticky as it sits out. I recommend having a spare zipper bag for storing the dough in your cooler between batches.

Cheers and happy Hump DAAAY!

Our First Camping Trip

Wooo! There's nothing like a long weekend to revitalize you. And there's nothing like skipping right to Tuesday to start out a week.

Mike and I celebrated Labor Day weekend in true Wisconsin style by finding the nearest lake and not moving til Monday. Early Saturday morning we made our way to Stone Mountain Campground, about an hour outside of Atlanta. 

Luca always obliges to family car pictures.

We got to work setting up the tent. The weather was beautiful and sunny but very, very hot and humid. 

First time setting up this tent and we got a compliment from out site neighbors on how quickly we got it up.

One thing I learned this weekend: hot, humid weather and bangs are not a winning combo. Those bad boys were pinned back within an hour of arriving and stayed there the rest of the trip.

Good thing I brought extra bobby pins.

Once we got everything set-up, we took a look around and realized that we had the best site of any that we could see. Later we drove around the campground a bit and further confirmed that we hit the campsite jackpot. We had a beautiful view of the lake from out tent pad. The best part was the secondary campfire ring right by the water. It was like a mini-lakehouse just for us. All we needed was a pontoon :)

Chillin' at our mobile lakehouse.

Sunday morning I attempted to sleep-in. Unfortunately Mike woke up to a completely deflated mattress. Womp womp... but we had a spare in the car that ended up working perfect for night two. To help recover from the whole waking up on the ground incident I made Campfire Cinnamon Rolls.

Good morning, Delicious.

The process is pretty easy. All you need is a pudgy pie iron (we have this double duty one) and a roll of pre-made cinnamon rolls. Since we were only going to use the fire for cooking, we opted for a bed of charcoal instead of a full blown campfire. To make the rolls, you simply spray the pie iron with nonstick cooking spray. Place on a roll or two depending on the size of your pie iron. Then cook for 3-4 minutes on each side. We both prefer ours on the doughy side and took them off once the rolls were golden brown.

Throughout our relationship Mike and I have always had this almost magical ability to be in the right place at the right time. We'll get in a line that is two people long and by the time were are through it will have 10 people in it. We'll show-up to restaurants and be seated immediately only to hear the next couple be told it will be a 20 minute wait. This weekend was no different. We were randomly assigned to the BEST campsite, and Sunday afternoon when the clouds started rolling in we got everything safely moved undercover and had just settled-in for some mancala in the tent when the first drops fell. 

We had mancala and Harry Potter on tape to keep us entertained.

The rain cleared up in time for a campfire Sunday night. After about an hour of discouragement  we finally got a nice fire roaring through the use of our neighbor's leftover firewood. Who'd have thought that the wood that was out in the rain would work better than the bundle we kept in car??

Luca was being weird about the lying on the ground. Tent box to the rescue!

During the campfire debacle we noticed a lot of other campers packing up and heading out. We took a look at the forecast and found out that thunderstorms were expected early the next morning, We seriously debated packing up and heading home too, but decided to stick it out and try our luck. Moments later the fire got going, and the next morning we were driving out of the campground when the first drops started to fall.

Here's to being in the right place at the right time!