A two-burner propane stove, a sink the size of a cereal bowl, and a dinette that doubled as the kids’ bed. That was the whole kitchen. And somehow, out of that cramped little galley with its woodgrain cabinets and avocado curtains, came a Thanksgiving spread that steamed up every window. Nobody had counter space, but everybody had amber glassware and a willingness to improvise. The meals below prove you never needed a full house to cook a real holiday.
Please note that some of the images in this article were created with the assistance of AI.
47. Foil-Roasted Turkey Breast With Boxed Stuffing and Jellied Cranberry Sauce
The oven in most 1970s campers was a cranky little box that fit one casserole dish and nothing else. So the turkey came pre-broken down into a breast, wrapped tight in foil, and left to roast while everyone played cards on the dinette.
Stuffing came from a box, and nobody apologized for it. You dumped the crumbs into a saucepan, added butter and hot water, clamped a lid on. The cranberry sauce slid out of the can in one perfect ridged log, and someone always argued it tasted better that way. They were right.
46. Pineapple-Glazed Canned Ham With Candied Yams Straight From the Can
Canned ham was the hero of the small-kitchen holiday. It came cooked, it came shaped like a little loaf, and it slid out of the tin with a sound every camper kid remembers.
You scored the top, pushed in whole cloves, laid pineapple rings across it, and spooned over a glaze of brown sugar and the juice from the can. The yams came from a can too, heated in a saucepan with butter and a handful of marshmallows if you had them. A whole holiday dinner from two cans and a burner.
45. Cornish Hens With Wild Rice and Glazed Carrots for the Small Family
For couples or a family of three, hauling a whole turkey made no sense. Cornish hens solved it. Two little birds fit in the camper oven side by side, browned up fast, and gave everyone their own.
Wild rice came in a boxed blend with a seasoning packet, cooked low on the back burner, and the carrots got a quick glaze of butter and brown sugar in a small pan. It felt fancy without being fussy — which counts for something when the kitchen is four feet wide.
44. One-Pot Beef Roast With Carrots and Potatoes on a Single Burner
When the oven was too small or too temperamental, the Dutch oven took over the whole meal. One pot, one burner, and a roast that cooked itself while the window steamed up and the rain tapped the roof.
You browned the beef, threw in carrots and potatoes and an envelope of onion soup mix, then let it simmer low for a couple hours. No dishes to speak of. The broth at the bottom became the gravy, which is the kind of efficiency a camper cook learns to love.
43. Swiss Steak With Mashed Potatoes and Pan Gravy
Swiss steak was the meal for the family that didn’t own a working camper oven. It all happened in one skillet — the cheap cut of beef pounded thin and braised soft in tomato and onion until a fork went through it easy.
The mashed potatoes came from a box of flakes, and honestly, in a camper with no room for a colander, that was a mercy. You spooned the tomato gravy over everything and called it a holiday. The smell cut right through the propane.
42. Pork Chops With Fried Apple Rings and Boxed Scalloped Potatoes
The apple rings were the whole trick. You laid sliced apple rings right on the chops in the pan until they went glossy and golden, and they turned a weeknight dinner into something that felt like a holiday.
Scalloped potatoes came from a box with that little foil pouch of powdered sauce. They baked in the camper oven while the chops rested, and the trailer filled up with a smell like somebody’s grandmother had snuck in while nobody was looking. Simple, warm, done fast.
41. Sausage-Stuffed Acorn Squash With Cranberry Relish
This was the meal for the cook who wanted things to look a little special. Each squash half became its own bowl, roasted until the edges caramelized, then packed with sausage and bread stuffing.
The relish was the from-scratch flourish — cranberries and orange run through a hand grinder clamped to the dinette. Tart, bright, a nice break from the jellied log everybody else was eating. Looks like real effort. Mostly it just wants a hot oven and some patience.
40. Open-Faced Turkey Sandwiches Drowning in Hot Gravy
The day after was its own holiday. Nobody wanted to wash dishes, so dinner got simpler and somehow better.
Two slices of white bread, the last of the sliced turkey piled on, then a ladle of hot gravy poured over the whole thing until the bread gave up. You ate it with a fork. Finest use of leftovers ever invented, and it came together in the time it took to reheat the gravy on one burner.
39. Turkey Tetrazzini Stretched With a Can of Peas
By the second day the turkey had to work harder, and tetrazzini made it stretch. Noodles, a can of cream soup, the chopped-up leftover bird, and a can of peas dumped in for color and to make it feel like a vegetable happened.
It baked in one dish in the little oven, cheese browning on top, and fed everyone again. A meal like this only tastes right in a camper — cooked tight, eaten tighter around a fold-down table.
38. Christmas Eve Cheese Fondue With Bread Cubes and Apple Wedges
Fondue was the great camper trick for the holidays because it needed almost no kitchen at all. You melted the cheese in one pot, carried it to the dinette, and dinner turned into an event.
Everybody crowded around the little flame, spearing bread cubes and apple wedges on long forks, and the drop-it-you-lose-it rule had kids laughing for an hour. The red floral curtains. The string of lights across the dark window. The cheese going stringy between the pot and your mouth. If one meal captured the whole cozy strangeness of a 1970s Christmas in a trailer, this was it.
37. Christmas Lasagna with Garlic Bread and Tossed Salad
Lasagna in a camper was a logistical miracle, and everybody knew it. The ovens in those rigs ran hot on one side and barely warm on the other, so the cook spun the dish halfway through and prayed. It came out with one scorched corner nobody complained about.
Garlic bread meant margarine and garlic powder on supermarket French bread, wrapped in foil and set on top of the oven to warm. The salad? Iceberg and bottled Italian, full stop. Six people fed out of a kitchen the size of a closet.
36. Christmas Beef Stroganoff with Buttered Egg Noodles
Stroganoff was the fancy one. It meant somebody had either splurged on a decent cut of meat or stretched a cheap one with a can of cream of mushroom soup and a dollop of sour cream kept cold in the cooler.
And it all happened on a single burner. Brown the beef, add the mushrooms, stir in the soup, finish with sour cream off the heat so it wouldn’t curdle. The egg noodles boiled on the second burner, got drained in a sink barely bigger than a soup bowl, and went straight back in the pot with a knob of butter. Twenty minutes, one skillet, one pot, and dinner looked almost dressed up.
35. Christmas Chicken à la King over Toast Points
Chicken à la King made a camper feel like a dining car. Creamy, studded with little red bits of pimento and bright green peas, spooned over toast somebody cut into neat triangles and called toast points like we’d walked into a restaurant.
The chicken usually came from a can, which nobody admitted and everybody knew. You made a quick white sauce with flour, butter and canned milk, folded in the chicken and vegetables, and warmed it through. Toast got made four slices at a time under the broiler, flipped careful so nothing scorched in that moody little oven.
34. Christmas Seafood Newburg over Rice
Newburg was the showoff. Usually saved for Christmas because it meant seafood, and seafood in a camper in December was an event all by itself. A cream sauce with a splash of sherry, canned shrimp or crab folded in, poured over plain white rice.
The rice did the heavy lifting on fullness, which mattered when the protein came from a small tin. It tasted rich, looked special on the plate, and used exactly one pot plus the rice pot. In a nine-foot galley, two pots going at once was practically a banquet.
33. Christmas Shrimp Cocktail with Loaded Baked Potatoes
Shrimp cocktail announced that Christmas had arrived, even inside a travel trailer. Shrimp chilled in the cooler, hung over the rim of an amber glass, with red cocktail sauce sharp enough to make your eyes water.
But the baked potatoes were the real genius move. Wrapped in foil and buried in the campfire coals (or baked in the little oven), they came out soft inside with that smoky skin. Split them, pile on butter, sour cream and whatever bacon bits survived the trip. Steakhouse night without a steak in sight.
32. Christmas Eve Oyster Stew with Saltine Crackers
Oyster stew on Christmas Eve was a tradition older than the camper itself, carried in from grandparents who’d done it in farmhouse kitchens. A can of oysters, milk, butter, salt and pepper. That’s the whole recipe.
It came together in one pot in about ten minutes, which mattered when everyone was tired from driving and cold from the walk back from the restroom block. You crumbled saltines right into the bowl until the stew went thick. Simple, warm, and somehow it tasted like every Christmas Eve before it all at once.
One can of oysters and a quart of milk, and suddenly the whole little trailer smelled like Grandma’s house.
31. Christmas Tamales with Canned Chili and Shredded Cheese
For a lot of families, especially out West, tamales were Christmas, period. A dozen bought from somebody’s neighbor or made at home before the trip, stacked in a pot and steamed over a couple inches of water on the little stove.
The camper shortcut was the topping: a can of chili warmed on the second burner, poured right over the tamales still in their husks, a fistful of shredded cheddar melting into the heat. You peeled back the husk underneath, dug in, and the whole trailer smelled like masa and cumin for the rest of the night. Honestly, I’d take that over a formal roast any day.
30. Christmas Morning Cinnamon Rolls with Sausage Links and Coffee
Christmas morning in a camper smelled like cinnamon and coffee before anyone’s feet hit the cold floor. The rolls came out of that cardboard tube that popped when you peeled it, baked in the little oven while sausage links sizzled in a skillet alongside.
The percolator did its slow gurgle on the back burner the whole time, that unmistakable blup-blup-blup. You iced the rolls with the packet of frosting, poured coffee into amber mugs, and ate standing up because there wasn’t room for everyone to sit at once. Nobody minded.
29. Christmas Morning Biscuits with Sausage Gravy
Biscuits and gravy was the stick-to-your-ribs breakfast for the day you knew you’d be outside in the cold.
The biscuits popped out of a can, same as the cinnamon rolls, and baked while you made the gravy. Brown the sausage in the skillet, sprinkle in flour to soak up the grease, pour in milk, and stir until it thickened. Crack in enough black pepper to make somebody sneeze.
Heavy, cheap, and it fed everyone for pennies. In a kitchen where every ingredient had to earn its space in the cabinet, a tube of biscuits and a roll of sausage pulled serious weight.
28. Hanukkah Brisket with Egg Noodles and Glazed Carrots
Brisket in a camper took commitment. It braised low and slow in a covered pot on the smallest flame you could coax out of that stove, filling the trailer with onions and beef for hours while the menorah candles burned down in the window.
The egg noodles and glazed carrots came together fast at the end, both buttery, the carrots finished with a little brown sugar. A lot of cooking for one tiny stove, and it meant the cook spent half the day in a nine-foot kitchen. Worth every minute. Some meals are the whole holiday, not just the food on it.
27. Hanukkah Potato Latkes with Applesauce and Sour Cream
You could smell the latkes three campsites over. Someone grated the potatoes by hand against a box grater over the dinette, knuckles always one pass away from trouble, then wrung the shreds out in a dish towel that never came fully clean again.
The oil went into a cast-iron skillet that lived under the stove all year. Two at a time, that was the limit on a two-burner, so dinner came out in shifts — and the first batch was always gone before the last one hit the plate.
Applesauce or sour cream was the great family schism. Both camps were wrong about the other, and both were happy.
26. Hanukkah Roast Chicken with Noodle Kugel
A whole chicken in a camper oven was an act of faith. Those little propane ovens ran hot in one corner and cold in the other, so you turned the pan halfway and hoped. The reward? Skin that crackled and a trailer so warm the windows fogged over.
The kugel baked right alongside it, egg noodles bound with egg and a little sugar, the top edges going brown and chewy. Sweet or savory depended on the family. Raisins started arguments that outlasted the drive home.
25. Passover Chicken with Matzo Ball Soup and Carrots
Matzo balls either sink or swim, and in a camper you only found out after the fact. Light ones meant someone got the seltzer trick right. Dense ones went in the soup anyway, and nobody said a word.
The broth simmered low on one burner while the chicken roasted in the little oven, and the carrots glazed in whatever space was left over. Tight choreography for two burners. The whole Seder table folded down from a dinette, Haggadahs propped against the salt shaker, the good amber glasses out for the occasion.
24. Easter Lamb Chops with Mint Jelly and Buttered Peas
Lamb chops were the splurge, bought at the last town with a real butcher before the campground stretch of nothing. They cooked fast in a hot skillet, which suited a galley where nothing could braise for hours.
Mint jelly came in that little jar that quivered like stained glass when you tipped it. A spoonful went on the plate, bright green against the browned chop, and the peas went on beside it, while a firm block of butter sat out on the counter on its own little dish, waiting its turn.
Nobody carved. You just ate off the bone with your fingers, elbows tucked, four people wedged into a dinette built for three.
23. Easter Deviled Eggs with Chicken Salad and Dinner Rolls
No stove required, which made this the smart Easter play. You hard-boiled the eggs the night before on one burner, chilled them in the tiny fridge overnight, and filled them cold in the morning.
The deviled eggs rode in that avocado or harvest-gold plastic carrier with the snap lid, the one that showed up at every potluck and picnic of the decade. Chicken salad got scooped onto soft dinner rolls, and there was lunch on the picnic table while the propane stayed off.
A cold spread in a camper felt like a day off. No fogged windows. No shift cooking. Just eggs dusted with paprika and the lake out the door.
22. Easter Asparagus Quiche with Ambrosia Salad
Quiche in a camper oven was a gamble worth taking. It fed everyone cheap and could sit out while the day got going, and the asparagus fanned across the top was a little proof that spring had arrived even in a lot full of gravel.
But the ambrosia was the real event. Canned mandarins, flaked coconut, mini marshmallows, a spoonful of sour cream to hold it together, served in the little amber dessert cups that stacked into the one cabinet that actually closed. Half salad, half dessert, and nobody ever settled which.
21. Easter Creamed Eggs on Toast with Fried Potatoes
This was the meal built from whatever survived the drive. Leftover Easter eggs, a few slices of bread going stale, a little flour and milk whisked into a sauce on one burner while potatoes crisped on the other.
Creamed eggs on toast won’t win any awards and nobody ever claimed it did. But it was warm, it was filling, and it fed a whole family off almost nothing on a cool spring morning with dew still on the awning. Humble food that tasted like being taken care of.
20. Easter Morning Hot Cross Buns with Scrambled Eggs and Ham
Hot cross buns rarely got baked in a camper. They got bought at the last bakery before the campground and warmed in foil on top of the propane oven, icing softening just enough to smear.
The scrambled eggs went straight to the plate while two more fried sunny-side up in the cast-iron skillet, the ham got a hard sear until the edges curled, and the percolator sat on the counter beside the stove, filling the whole trailer with that smell.
Easter morning in a camper started with a pot of coffee on the counter and the sweet spice of a warmed bun, the whole family still half in sleeping bags.
19. New Year’s Day Black-Eyed Peas with Ham and Cornbread
Black-eyed peas for luck, eaten January first, no exceptions. In a camper that meant one pot going low and slow most of the afternoon while the heater worked overtime and the windows fogged solid.
A ham hock or the tail end of the holiday ham went in for depth, and the cornbread baked in a cast-iron skillet in the little oven, edges going brown and crisp. You crumbled it right into the bowl and let it soak.
18. New Year’s Day Pork with Sauerkraut and Mashed Potatoes
Pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s, another lucky meal, the pig rooting forward so your year moved forward too. The whole camper took on that tangy braising smell that some people loved and nobody could escape.
The pork went into one pot with the kraut and cooked down until it pulled apart, while the potatoes boiled and got mashed by hand against the side of a saucepan. No fancy tools. Just a masher and some muscle, and a pool of butter in the center of the mound that was non-negotiable.
Heavy food for a cold day parked somewhere quiet, the first meal of a new year made in a kitchen the size of a closet. Nobody ever remembered the campsite. Everybody remembered the plate.
17. New Year’s Eve Cocktail Meatballs Over Buttered Rice
The grape jelly and chili sauce combination lived in nearly every camper cupboard, and on New Year’s Eve it got put to work. You browned the meatballs in the skillet first, then let them bubble in that glossy sweet-tangy sauce while a pot of rice steamed on the second burner. The whole trailer smelled like something was happening.
Toothpicks turned them into finger food for the grown-ups staying up. Ladle the same meatballs over buttered rice, though, and suddenly it’s dinner. One skillet, one saucepan, a crowd fed.
16. New Year’s Eve Split-Pea Soup with Ham and Toasted Rolls
This was the meal that justified saving the holiday ham bone. It went into the stockpot with a bag of dried split peas, water, and whatever carrots and onion were rolling around the crisper drawer, then simmered on low while everyone played cards.
Split-pea soup asks for almost nothing and gives back a full pot. The rolls got toasted in the oven, or on the dry skillet if the oven was busy, and there was dinner on a cold night parked somewhere quiet.
15. Valentine’s Day Skillet Steak with Baked Potatoes and Green Beans
You could do a steak dinner in a camper. It just took one good cast-iron skillet and the patience to let it get screaming hot over the propane. The potatoes baked wrapped in foil, started an hour ahead so they’d be ready when the steak came off.
Green beans finished in the same skillet after the steak rested. A candle in a glass pillar holder, two plates on the rectangular wooden table, and the smallest kitchen you ever cooked in suddenly felt like a restaurant.
14. Valentine’s Day Chicken Cordon Bleu with Rice Pilaf
Chicken cordon bleu was the dish you made when you wanted the meal to feel fancy without actually being hard. Pound the chicken flat, roll it around a slice of ham and a slice of Swiss, bread it, and brown it in the skillet before finishing in the little oven.
The rice pilaf came from the box that lived in every camper pantry, toasted and simmered on the back burner. Slicing into that chicken and watching the cheese ooze out felt like a win every single time. I stand by the boxed pilaf, by the way. It belongs here.
13. Valentine’s Day Heart-Shaped Meatloaf with Pink Mashed Potatoes
Shaping the meatloaf into a heart was the kind of thing that made the kids groan and then quietly love it. You patted the mixture into a heart right on a foil-lined pan, brushed it with ketchup, and baked it in the camper oven until the glaze went glossy.
The pink potatoes were the gag that stuck. A little ketchup stirred into the mash turned them a soft rosy color, and somehow nobody minded. Corny? Absolutely. Also the meal everyone remembered.
12. St. Patrick’s Day Corned Beef and Cabbage with Boiled Potatoes
One pot did all the work, which is exactly why it suited a camper. The corned beef went in with its spice packet and simmered for hours until the whole trailer smelled like the holiday. Cabbage wedges and potatoes dropped in at the end to cook in the same salty broth.
You carved it right at the dinette because there was nowhere else to do it. The pot steamed, the windows fogged, and a St. Patrick’s Day campsite dinner came together with barely any dishes to wash after.
11. St. Patrick’s Day Shepherd’s Pie with Buttered Bread
When the corned beef wasn’t happening, shepherd’s pie carried St. Patrick’s Day instead. Ground meat browned with onion, peas and carrots stirred in, all of it topped with a layer of mashed potato and baked until the top caught some color under the fork marks.
It used the oven, which in a camper meant planning. But it also meant one dish fed the whole booth, with a few slices of buttered white bread on the side to mop the plate. Comfort food that didn’t care how small the kitchen was.
10. St. Patrick’s Day Irish Stew with Skillet Soda Bread
This was the long, lazy version of the holiday. Cubes of meat, potatoes, carrots, and onion went into the pot low and slow, thickening on their own while the hours passed outside at the campsite.
The soda bread is the part worth remembering. No oven needed if you were short on time, because you could bake it right in a covered cast-iron skillet over low heat, the cross cut into the top for luck. A bowl of stew, a torn wedge of warm bread, and you weren’t getting up from the table for a while.
9. Fourth of July Hamburgers with Corn on the Cob and Potato Chips
The Fourth was the one holiday the tiny kitchen got a break, because half the cooking moved outside to the grill. The galley still pulled its weight, though. Corn boiled on the stove, chips came out of the bag, and the burgers got finished on a cast-iron griddle when the campsite had no grate.
Everything landed on one plate and you ate it with the windows open and the fan going. Lemonade in the amber glasses, condiment bottles on the table, and the kind of easy summer dinner that didn’t need anyone fussing.
8. Fourth of July Hot Dogs with Baked Beans and Coleslaw
The lazy-day cousin of the burger spread, and honestly the one that made more sense when nobody wanted to work. Hot dogs boiled or browned in a pan, beans warmed in a saucepan straight from the can with a little mustard and brown sugar stirred in to make them taste homemade.
The coleslaw got made ahead and lived in the fridge, which was the trick. Cold, creamy, tangy against the hot dogs and sweet beans. Three things on a plate, a camp chair in the shade, and a holiday that asked almost nothing of the cook.
7. Fourth of July Sloppy Joes With Pickles and Creamy Coleslaw
Sloppy Joes were the Fourth of July answer for when the grill was taken, the charcoal ran out, or it simply rained. One skillet, a pound of ground beef browned down with chopped onion, then a can of sauce or a homemade mix of ketchup, mustard and a little brown sugar stirred in until it went thick and glossy.
Soft hamburger buns did their best and failed every time. The filling slid out the back, dripped onto paper plates, and stained at least one shirt per kid. A spear of dill pickle on the side cut right through all that sweetness.
The coleslaw was the creamy kind, shredded cabbage drowned in mayonnaise with a splash of vinegar and sugar, made early and left to chill in the icebox. Some folks piled it right on top of the meat. That family argument never got settled either.
6. Fourth of July Foil-Packet Fish With Summer Squash
If the campground sat on a lake, somebody spent the morning of the Fourth with a fishing pole, and dinner depended on how that went. When the fish cooperated, the fillets went straight onto sheets of heavy foil with a pat of butter, a few lemon slices, salt and pepper.
Sliced zucchini and yellow crookneck squash from a roadside stand went in alongside, maybe a few rings of onion. You crimped the edges tight and set the packets on the campfire grate or a hot grill. No pans to scrub, no fish smell trapped in the trailer for days.
Opening the packet was the best part. A puff of steam, butter pooled at the bottom, squash soft and sweet. When the fish didn’t bite, store-bought fillets from the camp cooler did the job just fine, and nobody had to admit it.
5. Memorial Day Fried Chicken With Picnic Potato Salad
Memorial Day kicked off camping season, and fried chicken was how a lot of families marked it. The cast-iron skillet came out, the chicken got shaken in a paper bag of seasoned flour, and the frying often happened at the picnic table on a camp stove so the trailer didn’t fill with grease and smoke.
The potato salad was made the night before, which is exactly why it tasted so good. Boiled potatoes, chopped hard-boiled eggs, celery, a little onion, mayonnaise and a squirt of yellow mustard, all left in the icebox overnight so the flavors could settle in together.
4. Labor Day Tuna-Macaroni Salad With Stuffed Tomatoes
By Labor Day, nobody wanted to light the camper oven. The air was still hot, the trailer was still stuffy, and the end-of-summer tomatoes at the farm stands were enormous. So dinner became a cold one.
Elbow macaroni got boiled in the morning while it was cool, then tossed with a can of tuna, diced celery, sweet pickle relish and plenty of mayonnaise. You cored out the big ripe tomatoes, sprinkled the insides with salt, and spooned the salad right in until it mounded over the top.
It looked like something off a ladies’ luncheon menu, which made it feel a little fancy for a campsite. But it was really just one pot of pasta and a can opener. A fitting way to close out the season before the long drive home.
3. Mother’s Day Chicken-and-Mushroom Crêpes With Asparagus
Crêpes had a real moment in the 1970s, and plenty of families took that trend camping. On Mother’s Day the rest of the crew took over the galley, swirling thin batter in a small skillet over the propane burner and stacking the finished crêpes on a plate under a dish towel.
The filling was diced chicken and sliced mushrooms folded into a creamy white sauce, sometimes shortcut with a can of cream of mushroom soup. Each crêpe got rolled around a spoonful and lined up in a baking dish, more sauce over the top, then warmed through in the little oven.
Spring asparagus, steamed until just tender with a little butter, made it feel like a restaurant brunch. The first few crêpes always tore. Mom ate those happily anyway.
2. Halloween American Goulash With Garlic Toast
Halloween at the campground meant an early dinner, because the kids wanted to get out and trick-or-treat around the loop before dark. American goulash was fast, filling, and cooked in one big pot on top of the gas stove.
Ground beef browned with onion and green pepper, then canned tomatoes and tomato sauce, a few shakes of seasoning, and elbow macaroni simmered right in the sauce until it soaked everything up. Hearty and saucy, which was exactly the point on a chilly October night.
Garlic toast came from slices of bread buttered and sprinkled with garlic salt, crisped in a skillet or under the broiler. It was for mopping the bowl clean before the costumes went on.
1. Halloween Stuffed Bell Peppers With Jack-O’-Lantern Faces
The faces were never surgical. One triangle eye bigger than the other, a crooked grin cut with the same paring knife that did the onions — and that was the charm of it. You scooped out a bell pepper, carved a goofy jack-o’-lantern into the front, then packed it with the same beef-tomato-rice filling that showed up a dozen other ways all year.
Then it went into a tiny camper oven that ran hot on one side and cold on the other, so you turned the pan halfway and hoped for the best. The cheese slid down over the carved teeth. Honestly, an amber candle on the counter by the sink did more decorating than anything you could buy at a store.
Nobody minded that the rice came out a little firm or the faces looked lopsided. It was dinner and a craft and a holiday squeezed into one sheet pan the size of a magazine. We’d take a night like that over a fancy kitchen any day.