Cooking on the road

by Phil Houseal as published in the Kerrville TX Community Journal & Boerne TX Hill Country Weekly - April 14, 2010




Leaving behind your home kitchen for the lifestyle of a full-time RVer does not mean wandering in the culinary wilderness. Downsizing your cooking space does not mean downsizing the quality of your cooking, according to Didi Ajax.

Ajax is a self-proclaimed “foodie” who created a new Club Ed class called “RV Cooking!”

As project manager for a private company, Ajax has done quite a bit of training. But this is her first attempt at teaching cooking. It came about as a result of her job with a software company. Ajax found herself living in campgrounds and RV parks for months at a time.

“One thing I had to do was go install software and train operators in how to use it,” she said. Over five years and 1000 campgrounds she “got to know a lot of people in the camping arena.”

Ajax always related her hobby of cooking to the nomadic lifestyle. Campers, she discovered, tried to bring the comforts of home to their RV, but had to overcome the limitations of the environment - lack of storage space, limited cooking surfaces, restricted access to ingredients.

“I started looking for tips, tricks, and ideas to make them more comfortable in a mobile cooking environment, and came up with the class to maximize use of the RV environment and still cook things we like to eat.”

The average rig has an oven with two or three burners, and a microwave oven. Her goal is to try to maximize the efficiency of cooking in such a cramped kitchen. She covers all the tricks in her class, but Ajax shares a few of her favorites.

“You don’t have room to travel with all your cooking items,” she explained. “My home kitchen has a gazillion tools, gadgets, and bowls. But on the road you have to minimize and find tools that are multipurpose.”

One of her favorite gadgets is the hand blender. “With the whisk attachment I can make a puree or soup, mix a milkshake, or blend salsa. It is great for this kind of thing.”

Another “go-to gadget” is the lowly toaster oven.

“They are really great. You don’t have to use propane, and as RVers like to eat out, you can use it to reheat leftovers.”

Not all of Ajax’s cooking happens on the road. She also teaches “Butters, Gravies, and Sauces” and “Weekend Brunch.”

“The weekend brunch is just for fun,” she said. “It is actually for folks who want to get up and cook something special when everyone is at home.”

But when you are not at home, you still can have wondrous culinary adventures.

“You can’t do a 9-course meal, but you can certainly pull off a 4 or 5-course meal,” Ajax said, noting she has prepared everything from chicken piccata to home-rolled sushi. “It’s all in the preparation and tools you choose.”

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Didi Ajax will teach “Butters, Gravies, and Sauces” on April 17; “Weekend Brunch” on May 1; and “RV Cooking!” on May 15. Her classes meet at the Silver Sage Corral Senior Activity Center in Bandera. For information or to sign up, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.

Club Ed is the Community Education program of the Kerrville Independent School District. Each year, we offer more than 400 classes throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with online courses, business and individual training, and after-school and summer camps. Comment online at clubedcomments.blogspot.com, or follow us on Twitter @clubedtx.