camping gear, camping outdoorsI didn't know if it was that my husband forgot about Valentine's Day or not, but instead of waking up to a gift, he turned on the computer after breakfast and called me into our home office and told me I could buy whatever I needed to add to our camping gear as his gift to me. He gave me carte blanch to choose anything I wanted, so I looked around the site he had selected for its camping gear, and I found cast iron skillets at great prices, so I ordered several of them, along with new camping dishes. I thought it was a great idea to let me choose what we need to beef up our camping gear, and when he presented me with a greeting card, I then knew he'd been deliberately waiting until Valentine's Day.

This is the first year he has given me camping gear for Valentine's Day so I had no clue that he had been thinking about our camping gear. I'm in charge of organizing the gear before we go, and he's in charge of setting up camp when we get there. I do all the cooking by choice so we split the chores and if I do the up front work of gathering up the food and cooking camping gear, I know precisely what we're going to eat. I set up the kitchen once we get to the campsite, while he and the kids put up the tent and other tables we use when we're camping outdoors.

This division of labor works really well, and it was smart of him to let me choose the new camping gear we needed for cooking great meals. I chose the Camp Chef 10'' Seasoned Cast Iron Skillet shown here because it's a great size for making hash brown potatoes and bacon in the morning and it comes already seasoned, really important for making eggs so clean up is minimal. I bought two of them, one to cook the eggs and the other for the bacon. We have several camping trips planned before the weather gets too warm, so I'm excited about getting the frying pans and new dishes for our next trip.

I'm pretty disciplined about keeping the camping gear separate from the home cooking tools, but if these pans do as good a job as I bet they will, I'll either break the rule or order more for cooking at home. My husband found a great site for buying camping gear and products for being outdoors at KE Active Lifestyle at http://kayserenterprises.ispeedway.com/, a site he came across when he was looking for knives for cleaning fish. After I placed my order, I looked around a little more and bookmarked the site because come Father's Day, I'll go back and see what's there for more great camping or fishing gear for him, and do the same for him that he did for me on Valentine's Day.