California Snowin'

Does anyone else panic a little when they go away for a long weekend and are staying at a place that has a kitchen? I do. We spent three nights at a friends cabin in South Lake Tahoe and I was in a food planning frenzy the week leading up to the trip. You would have thought I was planning to take my family to a third world country with the amount of food I was bringing. As if there wasn't a Safeway a mere six minutes from the house. I started to plan every single possible meal and potential food disaster headed my way.

Growing up, we used to spend a lot of weekends up in the snow and the dinners that I remember the most were big bowls of spaghetti and meatballs and lots of garlic bread. I loved those weekends, because we always shared the house with a few other families and there were always plenty of kids to play with. The dinner would magically appear on the table and people would serve themselves.

I wanted that vibe going in, but my need for meal planning took over and so I created the following menu.

Friday dinner: Pasta bake, salad, garlic bread, steamed broccoli and kale chips
 
Saturday breakfast: Cinnamon rolls and fruit - I bought canned cinnamon rolls for the first time in what must be twenty years and they were just as delicious as I remembered them. 
Saturday lunch: Friday night leftovers
Saturday dinner: Homemade pizza, salad

Sunday breakfast: Pancakes, fruit
Sunday lunch: Quesadillas and/or leftovers
Sunday dinner: Chicken stew with pasta

Monday breakfast: Out to eat at the Red Hut
Monday lunch: On the road out of Tahoe we hit an In-N-Out!

The trip was great and here are a few highlights. The kale monster struck again, eating pretty much the entire bowl of kale chips by herself.

However, the culinary highlight of this trip were the homemade Sno Cones. I wanted to make these with real snow and my kids flipped out when I made them. It could not have been easier (or totally unhealthy, I quickly got rid of this syrup after this picture was taken).

Sno Cone Syrup

1 cup water
2 cups sugar
2 packages Kool-aid mix

Combine the sugar and the water in a sauce pan and bring to a boil for one minute or till the sugar is dissolved. Take the pan off the heat and pour half of the sugar-water mix into a bowl with one package of Kool-Aid and then pour the remaining sugar-water mix into another bowl with the other package of Kool-Aid. Pour into squirt bottles and... Instant Sno Cone syrup!

When we arrived on Friday afternoon, we didn't see any snow and made do with this

And then we woke up to this the very next day

Instant Winter Wonderland. Best trip of the year and it's only January!