Seasonal Bounty in Almost Heaven

For our annual 3 day retreat at Holly River (WV) State Park, we pack a cooler of local foods to prepare breakfasts, 2 dinners, 1 lunch, and 1 meal consisting of leftovers. This year I purchased 1 flank steak and 1 local trout from our farm friends.  The bounty of vegetables are from the local farmers market, our garden and a local farm stand.  For breakfasts I made eggs, Canadian bacon and pancakes for which I'd packed measured ingredients.


After unpacking, I made us grilled cheese with local bread and my refrigerator pickles.  Then I placed the flank and many local vegetables in the crock pot for our evening meal. This is a picture of the meal prep from a few years back.  I packed the same sauce ingredients for this years' meal.  There was enough flank leftover for a BBQ beef sandwich the next day.  I made Cole slaw with a Greek Yogurt dressing and honey.  The recipes are here.

The recipe for the pancakes is here.   

For the lovely platter at the top of the page, I first rubbed sliced garlic cloves along the inside of the fresh trout.  I filled the inside with sliced onion, fennel and lemon, then baked for almost 1 hour.  At mid-way, I added a few halved patty pan squash misted with olive oil spray.

The assortment of sliced vegetables, squash, fennel, onion and pepper were sauteed in olive oil with an herb seasoning.  That's local corn steamed and cut-off-the-cob and local cole slaw with carrots and celery.  A sliced mango completed the dinner platter.  That's Fiesta ware china with the Holly River logo stocked in the cabin!  We feasted on our picnic table outside the cabin.

 Holly River State Park was created in 1938, under the management of the State Conservation Commission.  There is a fully stocked kitchen, yet no electronics nor cell service in the area.  We were surrounded by nature.

The park has a swimming pool, also built in the 1930s, and a restaurant.  We ate dessert one night in the restaurant-a delicious homemade blackberry cobbler and dinner the last night.  The homemade vegetable soup. hot rolls and chicken breasts were perfect.

The scenic byways provided just the right amount of entertainment with no distractions and no stores.  This is a beautiful remote area of West Virginia not uncommon.  We are lucky to find this only 90 miles from home.