Vanlife Christmas _ Camp and Cook Cornish Hen_2

Today's video, in honor of the holiday season, is going to be my Christmas special. Oh, that looks so good. Cheers, first piece. That is good. It's almost like a 40 movie. I can feel the heat from the stove behind me. It feels like this is almost a real thing. So last night, I slept out at this In-N-Out. I was driving around until super late, and I meant to stay at a rest stop that is kind of right down the road from where I'm camped at right now, but when I got there last night at like 12 30, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. Every single spot in the rest stop was taken, and not only every single spot, people were pulled up on the side, on the curb, everywhere that you could possibly fit a car. There was a car park there with someone staying in it. I don't know what it was about that rest stop. Maybe it's just the area, but there was nowhere to park, so I had to find somewhere else that I could park, and I ended up here at an In-N-Out parking lot to sleep, but I didn't fall asleep until really late last night, so we also slept in, so it is 11 o'clock. I don't have a watch on, but since we're here, we clearly slept past breakfast time, and I haven't had In-N-Out in a very long time. I'm gonna go and get me a burger. So In-N-Out, anyways, In-N-Out supposedly has a secret menu that you can order from if you know how to order it, because for those of you guys who don't know anything about In-N-Out burger, they have three menu options. Burger, cheeseburger, and double cheeseburger, and that's pretty much it for menu options, but if you know what to order, you can get them a little bit different than what they have listed up there. Can I get the fries extra or well done? Sorry. Awesome, thank you. So we got the double double, which is a standard menu, but then we got it with a whole grilled onion. We got the patty mustard fry, which means it's cooked with mustard or something. Chopped chilies, which are just really good, and then we got our fries well done, because I think that makes them 10 times better. 71. Oh, yes, please. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thanks, sir. Yep. I'll get you. Appreciate it. What goes around comes around. Yep. Thank you. Have a good one. Nice festive bag for the holiday season from In-N-Out. If you don't try anything else, next time we go to In-N-Out, get the fries well done. It is so much better. So much better. But today's video, in honor of the holiday season, is going to be my Christmas special. So we're going to be doing a bunch of Christmas stuff today, and then cooking a big Cornish hen Christmas meal tonight when we get to camp. But this is the burger we got, so it's got chopped chilies on it, yellow things. It's got a whole grilled onion, and the burgers are cooked in mustard, which I normally don't even like mustard, but it's pretty good when you do it like this. But yeah, seriously, if you go to In-N-Out, give it a try. It's like the perfect order for me. It's probably not going to be perfect for everybody. The chopped chilies give it that little bit of spice, which I like in my meals. You might not like it. Either way, you can look up the whole secret menu online. But I hope everyone is having a very happy holiday season. I've been spending more time with my girlfriend and with my family, which has been nice. It is weird that it is the middle of December right now, but I'm on the verge of sweating in the back of the van, and I'm in shorts and a t-shirt. I'm used to Maryland winters, which aren't the worst winters, but it gets pretty cold, like 20 degrees Fahrenheit, which is this Celsius. So being in a shirt and shorts in the middle of winter is a very weird feeling, but the bed is made halfway-ish. I never end up doing that side because it's just a pain to jump on the bed. So let's get out of here. Every station during the holidays has Christmas on it. So we've been staying pretty far south for the last few weeks just to avoid the real winter up north, but I think for tonight I want to get out of this pseudo-winter heat. It's only 70 degrees, but I want to get into something a little bit cooler, get more in the Christmas spirit, because I just genuinely cannot get in the Christmas spirit. When I'm hot wearing a t-shirt and shorts, it just doesn't feel like Christmas. No matter how many lights or trees or things that I see, I just cannot help it. It doesn't feel like Christmas to me. I want to have 16 jackets on, snow on the ground, freezing cold, and then maybe I'll feel it, but closest we can get is 45 degrees up in the mountains tonight, so that's where we're going to go. But first, we got to make a few stops. So tonight, in the spirit of Christmas, I don't really know what a Christmas meal is supposed to be like, because when I was a kid, we never really had like a set Christmas meal like we did Thanksgiving. Like Thanksgiving, we always had turkey at my grandma's house. Gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, every single year for the 29 years I've been alive. But for Christmas, it's never the same. We've eaten out, we've eaten at home, we've done ham, we've done turkey. So I just ended up googling what's the most Christmas meal that I can cook. What came up is Cornish hen, so that's what we're doing. First things first, we'll get some stuff to spruce up the van and get in the Christmas spirit. Nice poinsettia. And we gotta have a tree. That'll do. Alright, so Trader Joe's had literally nothing I needed other than a poinsettia and a Christmas tree, so we're gonna have to run to another store real quick. The motherland. Walmart. Yeah, I don't know. It's just something about palm trees and warm weather that just really isn't giving Christmas. I want to be up there where that snow is up in that mountain. I don't know if you guys can see it. I got myself a Christmas shirt for tonight too. Get more in the spirit of things and then we've got everything we need for dinner. I think, I hope this Cornish hen thaws out before tonight. I think I'm gonna leave it in like a bowl of some water because it's never good to thaw something too fast. But the only real proper way of doing it is to leave it in a bowl of cold water so it doesn't thaw out too fast. But hopefully it'll be thawed out by tonight when I cook. Alright, everything's all packed up. Let's hit the road and get up in the mountains. We made it to the top of the mountain. I picked up some Christmas supplies along the way and this sick hat that lights up. My head's really big though, so like it's kind of tight honestly. But that's okay. We're feeling festive. We're at Santa's Village. I don't really know what it is. I saw it on the maps as I was driving up here and figured might as well stop by before we get to that camp. It's a little cold out though. Okay, not exactly sure what's in there but it is 70 bucks just to go in. Looks like they have an ice skating rink. I saw some like kind of go-karts and I'm sure they have other stuff but not really worth 70 dollars for me to find out. So we're gonna skip over Santa's Village and go find a place to camp. Alright, so I found a spot. Hopefully no one's there because there's not a lot of spots in the area that we're at within like 20-30 minutes. So I'm hoping this is good. It's about 11 minutes down the road. That should hopefully be good for the night. But also something I've wanted to do on this channel for a while is cook family recipes. Whether it be my family recipe, my friends family recipes, or even family recipes or just recipes that you guys really enjoy. Cook them on the channel and kind of share them with everyone else and take recipes that I like and you guys like and people around you really enjoy and kind of share them with a broader audience so everyone else can try these recipes. So what I think I want to do is, if the sun is so bright, if you guys have a family recipe or a recipe that you just really really enjoy that you think other people would enjoy that maybe isn't out on the internet or that maybe is just less known, send me an email with the recipe and some detailed ingredients. And if there's any kind of story tied to the recipe, send it to me in the email. If it's like a long-held family recipe or there's some history to the recipe or something like that, put that in there as well. And the first few people that I choose to cook their recipe on the channel, I'll send you guys a bunch of merch and I'll give you a shout out in the video when I cook the meal. I'm interested to see what you guys send me and what I'm going to cook. It's beautiful. Definitely up here in the mountains now. I think this is gonna be camp for the night. Such a nice temperature out. It's a little bit cooler. You got the pine trees. A little bit more Christmassy vibey. But I'm gonna get changed and set up the very minimal Christmas decorations that I have. Here we go. Very minimal Christmas but honestly you can't really do much in a van. I don't like to have a bunch of stuff that goes to waste. We got the yule log on the TV. We've got some colorful lights. Our Grinch tree and our poinsettia. So that's pretty much all you're going to get for Christmas. Decor in the van was good enough. And around the forest. So that counts as kind of its own pseudo decoration. I wish I could pull more like back into the forest but it's all blocked off with rocks I guess. I don't really want people pulling back here because it looks like this used to be some sort of road where you could pull back. I wonder if there's a view down here at the bottom though. Go walk down there and check it out. Nothing too crazy. You can see kind of some of the view through the trees. I'm sure if I walked up there it might be better. But for now I think I'm gonna head back to the van and get camp set up. Then we're gonna cook us a nice Christmas dinner in the van. Let's check on the chicken. Doing good. There we go. Nice little place to hang out tonight once we finish cooking dinner. Which I think now I'm gonna get started prepping dinner because we got a couple courses. Well, not a couple courses. A couple different pieces to this recipe. We're going with a classic starch, protein, and veggie dish. Our Cornish hen is thawing out lovely. But while we wait for that to continue to thaw completely, I might turn these off. They're a little distracting. Where is it? There it is. I am gonna get started prepping. There's the ingredients. So we've got potatoes as our starch. And my favorite vegetable, one of my favorite vegetables of all time, Brussels sprouts is our veggie. I'm just gonna take this potato and roughly chop it into kind of cubes because we're gonna be boiling this and mashing it. Should probably rinse it off first though. I almost forgot. We actually need to boil these potatoes. So I'm gonna get those going right now so that they're ready with the rest of the meal. We'll get some water in there. We'll get that cooking. Now we can finish prepping. Just like that everything is chopped and prepped and ready to go. We got minced garlic, minced thyme, minced rosemary, half Brussels, a lime that we'll deal with later. Potatoes are coming to a boil and this guy is just about fully thawed. So that's good because now that we have everything prepped we can throw together our rub that we're gonna rub this chicken down with before we throw it in the oven. I'm gonna have to turn on these bright lights because it's getting dark out. Ruins the mood but gotta do what you gotta do. So for the rub for the Cornish hen we're gonna use about half of this rosemary, three-fourths of this thyme, all of this garlic, the zest from one lemon, black pepper, salt, some paprika, and then we'll top that off with a little olive oil. Then we can give that a nice little whisk together to combine all of that lovely seasoning into our rub. And now we can just get everything ready to go in the oven with this nice sparkly toaster oven set of pans that I got. It's perfect for my tiny little oven. You can see the sunset through the trees, it looks really cool. But anyways we got our Brussels. Then we can take our wonderfully thawed out Cornish hen and pat it dry pretty much all around the outside and then on the inside of its little cavity, whatever you want to call that. And then once that is sufficiently pat dry, pop down on our pan. And I'm gonna throw on some gloves because I do not want to get my hands all oily and dirty. So you can just take this and kind of pour it all over our lovely little Cornish hen. Make sure to rub it in there, in all the little cracks and crevices. Not too much in one crack or one crevice. There we go. Wonderful. And I don't have oil slash chicken covered hands. Wonderful. So now honestly the final thing we need to do in terms of prep is get a little bit oil on these Brussels sprouts. And all these need in order to be perfect is a little bit of salt, sprinkle over the top, and some pepper. And that will make you the perfect Brussels sprout. Shake that up. And I think, I haven't made these in a while, I think face side down makes them crispier. I don't know. We'll test it out. We'll do half of them face side down and half of them face side up and see what kind of works better. Turn this into a little science experiment. And then I can do something I should have done 10 minutes ago, which is preheat the oven to 425 degrees. So we're gonna go ahead and do that now. Doesn't take long for this oven to preheat though. Now all we got to do is cook this, wait for those to finish, and we're pretty much done. I do want to tie this thing's legs together. I couldn't find any butcher's twine at the store, but I did see online, I think you could use like a little tinfoil and tie the legs up like that. Beautiful. It actually worked very nicely. And while I wish I could, once I get these in the oven, sit outside with the fire pit, got my little setup over there, I can't because I need the propane in the van in order to cook the food. So I can't sit outside until the food's done, but that's not too bad. It's still pretty early. So once that stuff finishes cooking, we'll move outside away from our fake TV fire and eat our Christmas dinner out by the real fire in the woods. It's almost like a 4D movie. I can feel the heat from the stove behind me. It feels like this is almost a real thing. Also got a lot of comments on my last video. They think that me and Savannah broke up because I posted a silent video. I'm happy to report that we are fully still together. Very happy and 100% not broken up. So it's going good. Wish she was here though. I think the potatoes are just about warm enough. I think the oven's preheated, so I'm gonna go ahead and throw those in the oven. I had to switch the pans around. That cornish hen barely fits in there. Like it's almost touching the top, but it does fit. So that's good, but I definitely don't have a potato masher. So we're just going to use this wooden pole that I found to mash potatoes and hopefully they mash nicely. I don't know how good I'm going to get it mashed up fully. Either way, before I continue beating up those potatoes, we're going to add the rest of the stuff that we're going to add to them. Starting with sour cream, a few knobs of butter, and then some milk. And this is how you get nice creamy mashed potatoes if you have a proper masher. I'm not sure how it's going to work with my log masher, but I'm still going to go for it. Also forgot to mention salt and pepper go in the mashed potatoes as well. I added a little more sour cream and milk and I definitely spilled a little bit of milk, but that's okay. We'll clean that up. And you can kind of just add as much as you want really of the milk and the sour cream. I personally prefer my mashed potatoes a little bit more like watery, liquidy, smooth than I do like thick. So I think I add a little bit more sour cream and milk than maybe someone else might like, but it's tiring my arm. I think that's done. Now we just got to wait for these things in the oven to finish cooking. While we wait for that, I'm going to play a little Christmas Xbox to pass the time. I also can't connect to my store link here because it's too spotty because I got the trees are blocking the connection. So I have to connect to my phone, which oftentimes is more than enough to play video games on if I have good service, which I have 5G service where I'm at. All right, got a few games of Arc Raiders in. Brussels sprouts I took out, they finished. Oh, they're so good. But I think this hen is ready to come out. I hope it's cooked all the way through. I'll let it cook for a little longer because this stove usually takes kind of a while to cook. Man, it does look beautiful. Look at that. Oh, that looks so good. Look at that hen. This is going to be a wonderful Christmas dinner in the van. Let's cool off by five minutes. Get everything else, plate it up while we wait. Also face down, I think we won the crispy test. They both kind of got crispy in their own way. This one's a face up one. This one's a face down one. Face down one's got crispier on the front side. I don't know which is better. I think the face down ones are better. Mmm, they're all good though. Damn. I can't get over how good this Cornish hen came out looking. Perfectly crispy. We can take the rest of our little seasonings, top this off with some fresh thyme, some fresh rosemary. That looks so good. I swapped plates because this one looks a little more aesthetic, but now we can get our propane, head outside, have a nice dinner by the campfire. I haven't used this propane fire pit in a while, but it's nice to have it because I can use it when there's a fire restriction because you're allowed to use propane fire pits most of the time when there's a fire restriction. And it's just easier because I have the propane in the van, so I might as well use a propane fire pit most of the time. I'm going to get this set up before I bring the food out there. There we go. We've got fire. Beautiful. Nice cozy fire. Cheers. First piece. Cornish hen. Oh, that is good. I've even got my own little Christmas tree right here. I wish I had some lights and decorations for it. This is like the perfect Christmas meal for one. And honestly, it was pretty easy. This is something I would cook again. Easy to cook. Looks nice. Good for you. And most of all, tastes good. It's crazy. I've been doing this for three years. Shout out to anyone that's been watching since the beginning. I am so incredibly grateful for this life and this lifestyle and being able to travel every day and come out here and share with you guys. It makes me really happy that you guys get some enjoyment out of it. Feels like a mutually beneficial relationship. And I'm just feeling very, very grateful. Sometimes I think I take it for granted and I start to think bad thoughts about my life or ending up where I have doing what I do. But I think that would happen regardless, no matter what profession I chose or what I chose to do with my life, there would be something that I could look at and be like, I want to do that. Or I should have done that. Or I should have done this. And I think sometimes it takes me out of just appreciating what I'm doing, appreciating this life, living in the van and being able to make money doing it. I think it just kind of goes back to that adage that comparison is the thief of joy. Grass is never greener on the other side. It's always greener where you're at, as long as you take care of it. So that's how I feel. This food is delicious. And even though it's windy, it is a beautiful night out here. Trying to stay more on top of things like dishes and stuff recently, too, because it just kind of makes me feel a little better to just get it all cleaned up and over with as opposed to leaving it in there. And then before I know it, the sink is overflowing. And now I have a mountain of dishes to do instead of just one dinner's worth. Take this hat off. Give my brain some, give my brain some of its blood flow back. Give my brain some of its blood flow back. Give my brain some of its blood flow back. Now that it's been constricted by that hat all day. Now we can get ready for bed. There we go. Ready for bed. Cleaned up. Changed. I think from here for the rest of the winter, because I kind of want to stay out of the cold, I'm going to do a tour down south through Texas Louisiana, Florida, and then probably up the east coast by the time that winter's over. So if you know anything that I should see or check out or stop by or do from southern Arizona all the way down through Florida, down maybe even all the way to Key West, let me know in the comments or send me an email if there's something cool I should do because I think that's my plan is for this winter. Also, I have a new project that I have been working on for a little while. We're just about to get started on actually working on it. I don't want to give too much away right now about what I'm working on, but it does involve you guys and it's something that you guys will be able to use. Now what exactly it is, I'm not going to tell you. I will reveal it eventually, probably very soon actually, but I'm very excited about it. Very excited to share with you guys and very excited for you guys to be able to use it. I'll leave that at that. Make sure you guys follow me on Instagram because I will probably announce it or hint at it there first. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. Leave a guess of what you think it is down in the comments. I want to see if anyone's right, but I think it's time for me to hit the hay. I got the van turned on too this morning because it was pretty cold. While I wait for that water to boil, we're going to clean up camp. Nice day out here. Where are my coffee cups? I did a cleaning house. Got new plates and bowls and I thought I kept one coffee cup, I guess I took all of them out and left them back at my girlfriend's house. I don't have a coffee cup. Moral of the story, that was a long-winded thought process. I could have swore I had a coffee cup though. We've already warmed up the water in a hot kettle. We've got enough plastics in our system already this morning. What's it going to do pouring hot water in a plastic cup to just give us more plastic contaminants? I just want some coffee. How's that for your cup of aesthetic morning coffee in the woods while living in a van? We got our campsite nice and cleaned up. Everything's put away. We're not forgetting anything this time like I did out in the Tetons. I wonder if anyone actually ever went and took those chairs. I wonder if they ever messaged me and said they did. Maybe someone found it. Who? It wasn't found. It wasn't. But I think I want to drive up the hill the rest of the way here. See what's up there. I think there's a fire lookout which means there might be a pretty good view up there for morning coffee and it's not too far up the road. So this ain't bad. I don't even have to drive all the way up the hill to get the view. There she is. Come on, we'll see the ocean. The ocean, you can see some planes flying, a bunch of low fog. It's kind of beautiful up here. But yeah, hang out here for a little bit. Finish my plastic riddled coffee. But I think that is it for this video. So as always, I truly, truly appreciate you guys watching. Hope you guys are having a great holiday season. Thank you guys so much for another amazing year traveling and doing this type of stuff. Hoping to have a lot in store this year. Maybe some new stuff. Maybe some new projects. I don't know. We'll see. But either way, very excited. Very grateful. And for I think the final time in 2025, I will catch you guys in the next year.