What do you take to eat when camping?
We have gone on different types of camping trips, from backpacking, to canoe tripping, to car camping, and there are some food items that we really have enjoyed. This is just a little sample of our most popular meals, with a couple of special dessert items added.
Let’s start with breakfast…
We ALWAYS, and I mean no matter what type of camping we do, we bring instant oatmeal. It is something we find that will fill us up for a good part of the morning, and it is also easy to make. We go to Costco and buy the big box of oatmeal, and then accompany that with some sort of granola, brown sugar, and sometimes dehydrated fruit. Our portion for all three of us would be 2 packets. I bring a few extra for those just in case moments, but they do get packed up and brought home for the next trip.
I will pack all my packets, granola, brown sugar, and even our tea and hot chocolate into a baggie. This means I only have to grab 1 bag out of the food box for breakfast. When we car camp, I find this is the easiest method as I can get my son to grab the bag and not have to worry about him rummaging around too much. If we are back country camping, I would sort out the food for each meal and layer it in our barrel for each day. That way we do not have to dig through the barrel to find the bag each time.
The other breakfast meal we enjoy is pancakes and bacon. I tend to do these on the first morning, but really any day is good. I cook the bacon at home and then place that in our cooler first thing. If we are on a back country trip, I would buy the packaged cooked bacon. As for the pancakes, I put the mix in a baggie and then just add the water and mix with my hands. Then pour it out into the pan, which I find this leaves very little mess for clean up. We have cooked the pancakes on the open fire, and also on our Coleman stove. Serve this up with maple syrup and dehydrated strawberries. YUMMY!
Now on to supper or lunch ideas…
You can take any of these next few ideas and use for either meal. Just depends on the day you are having and if there is time for cooking. The first meal is chicken fajitas. This is a recipe that my mom showed me how to make, and it is a staple in our house. You cook up onions, peppers, and chicken with garlic salt, pepper, and cumin. Then put on a tortilla wrap with cheese, salsa, sour cream, guacamole, etc, etc. Roll it up and enjoy. Like the bacon, I cook up a batch of this before we leave on trips and wrap them in foil and place in a baggie. If we are back country camping or car camping, this becomes our first nights meal. We will either warm these up over the fire, or I warm them up on our stove in a frying pan. The pan just helps to disperse the heat a little better than placing them directly on the burners. This is accompanies with either a bag of chips (yes, chips), or some corn.
Our other favorite meal is campfire pizza. Just pizza, but cooked on the campfire. I have seen Camper Christina do these on the stove, which is another option if you are unable to have a fire. Our pizzas are just made with Naan bread, pizza sauce, and then what ever toppings you desire. Since I have a lactose sensitivity, I use 2 year old cheddar for mine and top it with pepperoni, bacon, peppers (if I happen to have any), and sun-dried tomatoes.
To cook the pizza, I buy a foil oven liner from the dollar store (which fits in a barrel nicely along the sides), and then place the pizzas on top and cover with foil. These will sit on the fire from 10-15 minutes, rotating them around to make sure that all pizzas get some of the heat. The cooking time will depend on your fire, and the more hot embers you have the better. If there are a lot of flames, you will find the bottom of the pizzas will burn before the cheese has had a chance to melt.
Lastly, let’s talk about treats…
I love baking, and I didn’t want the outdoors to stop me and my baking skills. There are short cuts for some items, and certain tools to create other baked goods. Below are the cinnamon buns that I have made on a few of our trips. They are made from Bisquick mix that I get at the dollar store. These are actually made from their tea biscuit mix. I use the recipe on the back for mixing, then flatten on a piece of foil, top with butter, cinnamon and sugar, roll and cook. These have been made in my back country oven that I purchased a few years ago from MEC. Eventually I am going to look into a reflector oven 🙂
There are other items I have made with this oven such as cakes and brownies. This oven has come on some of our adventures where I have made my own birthday cake, as well as birthday cakes for students. It is such a nice treat to be able to have a cake on your birthday in the back country. Below are the brownies that I made one year in Algonquin. They were from a brownie mix that had a caramel drizzle. Not homemade, but still super tasty!
The last picture is just showing the strawberries that I have dehydrating this year. I tried raspberries, but they didn’t work out so nicely, and the blueberries need a really long time. As we were going away, the blueberries will have to wait for another time.
I hope you enjoyed reading about some of our typical meals. I love seeing what other people do for meals, as I am always curious to find new recipes in hopes that it will inspire me to try new things as well.