Plans for our big trip have largely been on hold throughout August as I’ve been struggling to keep up with the day job whilst the kids have been on school holidays… best get used to it though as there won’t be school hours 9-3 while we’re on the road!

I’ve been preparing for a conference in London for the Charity I work for, which is on Thursday. After that we’ll be getting down to the serious business of getting rid of stuff and preparing for the trip. In particular we have an awful lot of Cows to sell!

Another task I took on over August is the involvement of the ninemonthsof.com campaign in which I am blogging weekly recipes to raise money and awareness for Pregnancy Sickness Support. Given that we are going to be leaving in just over 5 months and the campaign lasts nine months (clue in the name) I will obviously be continuing the recipe blog whilst on the road around the States and Canada. So expect a lot of one pot campervan wonders as well as a vegetarian Hari Krishna dish or two and a prehistoric cave man style dish…

Which brings me onto the news that we have managed to get a wwoof placement at a stone age living skills centre in the Colorado Rockies! To say we are excited would be a major understatement!

This summer has seen vast amounts of outdoor cooking for us and the wonderful Daddy Dean bought me a pair of fantastic dutch ovens (yes, ha ha) for our 7th wedding anniversary. In case you’re not quite sure what a dutch oven is (the cooking type not the smell trap type) then let me enlighten you… A large case iron pot with a well fitting lid which you use on a campfire to create an oven environment for cooking everything from stews to cakes and bread. The lid is designed so you can put hot coals on the top too in order to control the temperature inside. This weeks recipe will be a new campfire dish I made specifically for my new ovens but can obviously also be cooked indoors so go on and have a gander at the nine months of team page.