Jen

Cat wrangler. G-free 4 life.

Siete Foods cooking class: baking with Buñuelos!

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We are huge Siete fans around here. I’ve got a corn allergy and David needs to watch his blood sugar, so our taco nights (and there are a lot of them) always feature Siete Almond Flour Tortillas. We buy Dip Chips and Fuego chips in bulk off their website. Thankfully more stores are carrying them now, so we don’t have to order online as often! For the second winter in a row, they’ve been selling Cinnamon Buñuelos, which are my favorite thing ever. Buñuelos are a treat in many cultures, but generally they are some kind of fritter. These are small and crispy, grain-free with cinnamon and coconut sugar. For the second time, Siete hosted a cooking class to benefit an organization doing food work. This time it was No Kid Hungry. For a $10 donation, we got 2 bags of Cinnamon Buñuelos, a chocolate bar, and the recipes. I …

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Instant Pot Shepherd’s Pie: Gluten-Free, Vegan, Tomato-Free

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Have you seen how much we love our air fryer lid for our Instant Pot? We try to make meals that don’t call for a lot of pots and pans, but since we had both instant pots on the counter, we went ahead and used both for this. This can be done without the air fryer step, or assemble in a casserole dish and bake in the oven. Everything is cooked, it’s just nice to brown the top and let the flavors rest. But without an air fryer, I would’ve eaten it without browning, and it would’ve been delicious. Ingredients 2 large sweet potatoes, washed and cut into 1” cubes 1 clove garlic, minced 8 ounces mushrooms, sliced (or one 6-oz can) 1 tsp ground thyme 1 tsp oregano 1 tsp marjoram 1/4 tsp ground sage One 12-oz can lentils, or 2 cups cooked green, brown, or black lentils 1 …

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Quick Tips: Turning off the beep on our RV Lock!

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We love our keyless RVLock. It’s so convenient to be able to come and go securely and without a key, plus we can share the code with friends and family if there’s ever an emergency and someone needs to get inside. The one thing we don’t like about the lock is the default beep when locking/unlocking. It’s extremely loud, and we can ALWAYS tell when someone else in a park has the same lock we do. But you can turn off the beep! Just hold the 1 button for about 5 seconds, until you hear a quick double beep. That’s it! If you change your mind and want the beeps back, do the same thing, and you’ll hear a quick single beep. Share this tip with your RV friends!

Our First Work Camping Experience (Might Be Our Last)

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Our first work camping gig didn’t go quite like we expected, but does anything go as expected during a pandemic? We could write a novel about our experience, but we’ll just share some highlights. First, a disclaimer: this is our personal experience, and our personal opinions. We are not speaking as representatives of Kamp Klamath, its owners, managers, or other workers. This is specifically our experience as temporary volunteer campers at this campground during the summer of 2020. This isn’t a review of the campground itself, or a discussion of the kind of experience a guest can expect to have. This post is only a personal account of our first work camping gig on our personal blog about our full-time RV life. This opportunity at Kamp Klamath in Klamath, California came at the perfect time: David was struggling with the altitude of Questa, New Mexico and we knew we needed …

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RV Park Review: Mountain Valley RV Park, Tehachapi, California

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This was only going to be a two-night stop-over on our way to Northern California, but we ended up blowing a bearing and spending a week here during July 4th. While we were sad and frustrated about the breakdown, this was a really great place to be stranded. Mountain Valley RV Park is located at Mountain Valley Airport in Tehachapi, California. It’s not a real airport, though: it’s for gliders! They’re the cutest and quietest planes to live near, and it was a lot of fun to watch them take off and land during the day. As an added bonus, the grassy part of the air field is filled with prairie dogs! This park does not have full hookups! Note that their “full hookup” sites on their website are not water, sewer, and electric. They have water and electric at these sites, but tanks must be dumped at their dump …

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Top 10 Reasons Why Traveling in an RV is the Best Way to Travel

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We’ve traveled a lot over the years, and we haven’t enjoyed any mode of transportation as much as we’ve enjoyed RVing. In light of COVID-19 and the recent surge of RV sales, which some are calling “covid campers,” here are 10 reasons why we prefer traveling by RV: Our own bed: We have our own bed, our own sheets and blankets, our own pillows, and we know they’re clean and washed without detergent that’ll cause allergic reactions. Traveling pre-RV was fun, but it was always so satisfying to get home to our own bed. Not we get to do that every single day we travel. Our own kitchen: This is especially important when traveling with celiac and food allergies. All the research, questions, and restaurant managers’ promises in the world can’t prevent the one food prep incident that ruins our whole trip. I do miss the days of discovering new …

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RV Park Review: Sierra Hermosa RV Park, Questa, New Mexico

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Sierra Hermosa RV Park is a small, wonderful park near Carson National Forest in Questa, New Mexico, with an extremely friendly owner. In fact, when calling RV parks in the area, Bobby was so friendly that he was our deciding factor. We were looking for a small, quiet vacation spot where we could relax and recover from a very busy time in Austin, and I was going to be able to take a little time (very little) to breathe before diving back into covid-extended tax season. The park did not have many sites, and the spaces were well spread out. We were backed up against a field filled with the cutest little prairie dogs, which the cats loved to watch all day. The day we pulled in, our neighbors gifted us the most delicious fresh cherries we’ve ever had from their tree at home in Albuquerque. (These cherries were so …

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RV Park Review: Hwy 71 RV Park, Cedar Creek, TX

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We stayed at this Austin-area park from December 2019 until June 2020. We planned to leave at the end of April, but decided to wait to travel due to COVID-19. This was our first time visiting Austin, and we loved it. We found a couple great safe places to eat (see our reviews of Zucchini Kill and Always Hungry), the best co-op grocery store ever (the unfortunately named Wheatsville), the Dinosaur Park. Sadly, we never got to check out the Congress Avenue Bridge bats due to the pandemic and avoiding crowds, but there’s always next time. Hwy 71 RV Park is located on the east side of Austin in the town of Cedar Creek. The nearest town with grocery stores and services (including a Buc-ee’s!) is Bastrop. There’s also Bastrop Mobile Home and RV Parts, which just opened this year and David used frequently for working on clients’ RVs in …

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The Dinosaur Park, Bastrop, Texas

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While this is geared towards kids, we are complete and total suckers for anything dinosaur, and it was right next door to us at Hwy 71 RV Park (we could see a couple dinos from inside the RV park!), so we absolutely had to check this place out. The Dino Park is only open from Thursday to Sunday during the day, and it was $9 per adult to get in. You enter through the gift shop, which was full of dino-themed goodness, and an animatronic dino show which you could watch by dropping a few quarters into the machine. Once you pay for your tickets, you can go out the back door and wander through the park. It’s an easy to follow path that’s stroller-friendly, although I did have a little trouble from time to time with my wheelchair, despite my Freewheel attachment. Overall I’d call this an easy walk, …

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Where has the time gone?

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It’s been a busy 3 months since our last post. All things considered (hashtag 2020), we are doing well and hanging in there. We have many updates to make! Since we left Austin, Texas in June, we’ve been to New Mexico and Northern California. We’re still in NorCal right now, in the middle of fire season and a pandemic. Jen survived the extended tax season (and is now going into extension season), and since RVing is one of the safest ways to travel and vacation right now because of the pandemic, David has been extremely busy repairing RVs. For the last 2 months, we were at our very first work camping gig (stay tuned for a blog post about that), where we had lousy cell service and no internet access. Now that we’re back in civilization with cell service, we plan on doing a lot of updating and catching up. …

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