Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that’s bad for you!

Last weekend, Jesse and I went camping at Hat Creek by the Subway Caves. We went fishing, went to the caves, spent one of the nights at the 'Mayor of Shingletown' (Jesse's dad)'s house, and best of all, I cooked with my dutch oven over the campfire! There's nothing better than a well-prepared meal cooked over a campfire in the cooling evening air as the sun slowly sets behind the trees and mountains!

I bought a cooler the day before the trip so that we could bring meat for the chili. At the Co-Op, we pickled out Humboldt Grassfed beef (I know I'm going to make a vLog about how wonderful grassfed beef is and how y'all should be eating sustainable meat!!), fat strips of bacon, and buffalo tri-tip (no pictures because that was cooked by Jesse's pa at his house).

For my birthday (Friday after next!), we probably will go camping in the Trinity Alps. I've got to bring my dutch oven again, no doubt, and I've already thought up dinner heh. This time, if I let Jesse keep some trout that we will catch (I got six last weekend!), then I definitely want to grill the trout whole after gutting and filling the cavities with orange slices, and score the flesh, which will allow the saffron-orange butter to distribute throughout the meat. mmmm yum, right? That'd be one crazy campfire meal!!

Humboldt grassfed beef browning up nicely in the oven. This isn't what I did first, though. I added chopped bacon to the oven for its wonderful, delicious, and salty drippings (pork fat rocks!!) and then sauéed chopped onions in the dripping. A few minutes of stirring until the onions started to become soft and sweat its juices, and then I removed the onions and bacon before adding big, cubed hunks of Humboldt grassfed beef to the oven.

When the beef browned up nicely and pink could no longer be seen, back in went the bacon and onions. Also, at this point, a can of beer was set slightly off the fire to warm up. In went crushed tomatoes (huge can), organic kidney/pinto/black beans, and the warmed beer.

I brought seasoning that I pre-mixed myself. Of course, I cannot remember everything that went in it, but you can see a bay leaf, I know I used cumin because the finished chili had the most wonderful note of cumin, and also because I use cumin all the time. There's some tumeric in that, chili powder, probably a hint of cloves. Also, cumin's wonderful pal- coriander seed, crushed red pepper flakes, and gosh I don't know, all wonderful spices went into that chili!! Note- I forgot to add the corn until after I added seasoning. I would've put corn in first, but doesn't matter!



We left the dutch oven alone while we fished some more in the last bits of sunlight. The water was black, yet the trout were still feeding on buzzing pests bouncing on the surface. We were getting nothing more than bites..darkness quickly crept up on us. Beer and longing thoughts of dinner fueled us with giddy energy as we ran through thorny bushes and jumped over volcanic rocks. By the time we got to our camp, the chili thickened up perfectly and we quickly spooned ourselves bowlfuls, never minding the heat on our tongues. Only a mere bowl was left of our smoke-infused, tender, meat-filled chili!





*****


The next morning, we fished first thing when we woke up. After an hour or so, our stomachs finally started to wake up! The fire was rebuilt and the dutch oven was warmed up earlier, so I tossed in the remaning slices of bacon to crisp up nicely.





In the great bacon fat, I fried some potatoes and quickly made scrambled eggs. Nothing technical or fancy about this meal, but it sure made a wonderful breakfast mash that went well with cold beer!