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When you’re traveling, living and working together in a small space 24/7 like we are, your relationship is bound to be affected in one way or another – for better or for worse. We’re both strong believers in the idea that what you focus your attention and intention on is the thing that tends to grow and flourish the most, so we’ve always placed a high priority on our relationship. It can be so easy to get caught up with the busy-ness and routine of everyday life and, as time passes and you become more comfortable with one another, those little things you used to do for each other in the early days of your romance can often start to slip away or be forgotten altogether.
Even before we hit the road, we knew that to keep our romance, spark and love alive, we’d have to keep working on it and continue to do things that make one another feel special and loved on a regular basis. That doesn’t mean going all out with grandiose or expensive gestures, we’ve found that small, regular practices make a bigger difference. That’s why we aim for the ones that are simple, easy and fun, so it never feels like a chore but something we actually look forward to doing!
As the most common questions we get are around our relationship and how we manage to thrive in a small space, we decided to share a few of the small, regular routines we’ve created as part of our lifestyle that all add up to make a big difference in creating or maintaining a loving, harmonious home and life – no matter where (or how) you live.
In this fun little video, Marc shares one of the many things we do (or more specifically, that he loves to do for me/us) to keep our love alive in RVLove.
If, however, you’re limited for internet data (as we understand many RVers are!) or simply prefer to read the information instead of watching it, we’ve included the video transcript with images below.
You’ll notice we’ve included Amazon links for a few of the items that work well for us, to make it easier for you to find and buy them. If you do decide to buy any of these, please use our links – we’ll get a few cents from Amazon and it doesn’t cost you any extra! We can put any earnings toward our weekly hearty breakfast budget 🙂
Enjoy!
Video Transcript: How we Keep the Love in RVLove – Tip #1
Marc: Here’s one of the simple ways we keep the love alive in RVLove.
Marc reveals the secrets behind his famous Hearty Breakfast
Marc: One of the questions we get a lot is: how do we keep romance alive when we’re on the road and living in a small space? One of the favorite things for us is cooking up, what I call, a hearty breakfast. It’s something that I do every week for Jewels, but even if you just did it on a special occasion, you know, a little bit could go a long way.
Oh yes it does! 🙂
Cooking a hearty breakfast, as I call it, is a pretty simple thing, but there’s a few little subtle things that can help make it a little easier for you and help make it just that little bit extra special for your partner. So I’m going to do a little step by step demonstration for you today.
Our version is pretty healthy too, but that’s up to you!
Step 1: Gather Your Ingredients
Grab your favorite pancake mix, eggs, butter and your milk of choice, your favorite bacon – we use a healthy turkey bacon – and a handful of fresh strawberries. Plus, real maple syrup.
Step 2: Cut your strawberries into heart shapes
Marc: So once I wash my strawberries, I like to do a little trick with the strawberries and if you just cut them down on a little angle like this and meet in the middle, it makes a bit of a heart shape and then you cut down the center and it makes really nice little hearts, so you can put little heart shaped strawberries on your pancakes when you’re done . I know it’s a little cheesy for some, but I like it. 🙂
Step 2: Prepare your pancake batter
Marc: This is my favorite brand, Pamela’s Banking and Pancake Mix – this is a gluten free option, because we eat almost always gluten-free. You could of course, use any pancake mix, but this is a great one.
We used to buy the small bags but find the larger one so much more economical as we use it so often
It’s a simple recipe, simple process, it’s just one cup – this is a half cup scooper – of the mix and one egg and three quarters cup of milk. It says water but milk’s a little better.
Use any kind of milk you prefer – we use almond milk which works just great
As easy as that. Now just mix it up and you’ll have your pancake mix all ready to go .
Step 4: Heat an electric skillet to cook the pancakes
Marc: I usually cook around 320 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s 160 degrees Celcius) on an electric skillet, it’s really nice.
This electric skillet is wonderful, because it actually has a warming tray too, so when I pull the pancakes off, I can keep the pancakes warm in here while I cook the eggs and bacon so everything gets plated at the same time so that’s a nice little tip, if you can get one of those.
Step 5: Pour batter into heart shaped pancake molds
We discovered these silicon molds work best, especially in the RV
Marc: I love these silicon molds. We used to have these metal ones and they were ok, you still had the end result. But you’d have to butter them and they were noisy and clanky and they especially aren’t as good in the RV because they clank and make noise and they’re heavier. But these… these are amazing, they don’t stick at all and they are lightweight.
These are lightweight and don’t rattle when driving
Marc: Then you just put about a third of a cup into each one .
Marc: While your watching, there’s actually two different sizes of these. . I find that these smaller ones are really nice for eggs. These other bigger ones are nicer for pancakes but either one would work.
Note: we use the larger, 4″ Trudeau silicon hearts for the pancakes, and the slightly smaller Norpro silicon hearts for the eggs, but either would work.
Step 6: Make your tea, coffee or other breakfast beverage
Marc: So while the pancakes are cooking, you’ve got a minute or two, so you can work on other stuff, you know do some of your initial prep for making a cup of tea or coffee or whatever your breakfast beverage of choice is. So I’m going to get the tea a little ready and then I finish cutting my strawberries into little heart shapes and then I have my eggs and bacon ready for when these come off.
So with the pancakes, they’ll start rise a little bit, and if you’ve ever made pancakes before, you’ll notice these usually get little bubbles on the top, but not always, but you can see when they start to set and then these molds come off so easy. I’ll just start peeling them off. They’re also nice because they’ve got silicon little knobs so you don’t burn your fingers.
These molds are super quick easy to clean
Notice these silicon molds, I didn’t pre butter these or anything, they just come right off and super smooth. You could just give them a quick wipe down and you could just re-use them for another round if you’re cooking for, like, your whole family or something, you know, but it’s just the two of so this is usually plenty of pancakes – even with me .
Silicon molds don’t need to be greased, so they are healthier too
See they’re nice little golden brown pancakes! Let me finish cooking on the other side then we’ll put them in the warming tray while we do the rest.
OK, so they’ve cooked on the other side. So we’ll just go ahead and pull those off and put them in our handy, dandy warming tray. .
Step 7: Cook the eggs and (turkey) bacon
Marc: Put a new little butter on here and we’ll throw the eggs on. And the eggs and the bacon can usually cook for around the same time. We like turkey bacon because it’s healthier and we actually think it tastes better too.
One little trick with the bacon… I usually cut them half instead of the long strips and you’ll see why a little later.
Ohhh, smelling good. Getting excited for brekkie now!
Brekkie is Australian slang for breakfast
Pulled them out of the egg molds just a hair to soon so they have a bit of extra shape to ’em, but that’s fine, it’s easy to correct.
Step 8: Creating a hearty plate of love and yumminess
Marc: So what I do is put the eggs there and I put a little heart shaped bacon with the two strips half strips of bacon and there we go. Put on a few heart shaped strawberries, a little butter and a little maple syrup…and enjoy your hearty breakfast!
Mmmm hmmm… Here we go, baby.
A big thank you…
…to OKAmusic.com for the background music “Do it like that” from the album, Half Lazy, Half Crazy. OKA is one of our favorite bands and hail from the Sunshine Coast in Australia. They let us use their music for our videos, which is awesome – thanks guys!
… to Julie for doing the video, photos and post production
… and especially to Marc for starring in and presenting in this video – and especially for making us a hearty breakfast every week! 🙂
How do you keep the love alive in your RV?
We’d love to hear your ideas for romance as well as any feedback on this article/video in the comments section below. Give the hearty breakfast a try for your loved one(s) and let us know how it goes!
© RVLove.com
2 thoughts on “Keeping the Love in RVLove #1: Hearty Brekkie”
Hi, My husband found your site through an ad he receives through email. We live in Virginia Beach, and are looking to buy an RV. It is amazing how much Coda looks like our Sadie. I pull her in a cart to the beach, and she rides in the passenger seat of my mini cooper. I am not to techno savvy, but when I figure it out I will send you some pictures. You are inspiring me to try to live on this for a few months while we try to find where we want to retire. I am 55 years old, and my husband is 59. We are still very young 🙂 My main reason for agreeing to an RV is I want Sadie with me 24/7. We are very attached. I love reading your blog. Maria
Hi Maria, thanks for your note. Is your Sadie also a lab/poodle mix? Sounds very similar they way you tow her in a cart and drive her about in your Mini – lots of fun! Glad you are enjoying our blog. It is definitely a fun lifestyle, we had the idea that traveling like this might give us a sense of another place we might want to ‘settle down’ but what we’re finding is we’re enjoying it so much, we can’t imagine staying in one place for more than a few months before getting itchy feet and wanting to move again! One of the main reasons we decided to buy an RV and travel America (instead of going to Europe… we had our eye on Italy) was because of Coda… we wanted to spend as much time with her as we could while we still had her… we figured at least another 4-5 years, which is why it was such a shock to lose her after only 5 months on the road… she had always been such a healthy dog. As devastating as her loss was, we are extremely glad we got to spend that quality time with her, giving her such a big and amazing gun experience in her last 5 months…a time when all of us were blissfully unaware of her cancer… as hard as it was to loser her so quickly, we are also glad we didn’t have to see her suffer. She had a blast right up to her last few days. So we understand your attachment to Sadie very well! Best of luck to you and thank you for taking the time to write us 🙂