Bump! I know...it's early yet (especially here in Indiana), but hey, gotta have time to get myself organized!
For desert, we take a piece of foil and put a banana in it sliced long ways and fill it with one or two goodies...chocolate, marshmallows, pecans, peanut butter...seal it in the foil and then put it over a fire for a few minutes. Just long enough to melt whatever is inside the banana. Mmm. I'm suddenly in the camping mood.
smores of course! I can still remember the look on my little ones' faces when they first had a smore. Their eyes lit up and their face read "amazement." I have pictures of this on my fridge. Have a great time!
Those meals sound soooo good. We generally have to stick with sandwiches, granola, and etc. because we have mountain lions, bears, and etc. at all our local campsites. We will often just get some fried chicken at the grocery store, eat it far from our campsite, clean ourselves up, and then head back to make smores. We do make the foil packets of meat, veggies, and potatoes when the place we are camping has fire pit areas located in common areas instead of just by our tents. I just don't want the unwanted guests showing up for dinner while we are sleeping. I can hardly wait to start camping again this year!
My ds favorite camping meal is baked beans in a can with hotdogs and breadsticks roasted over the fire. For the breadsticks we just take the breadstick dough in a can and wind it around a clean stick and cook like the hotdog. We take along hotdog cooking forks, an aluminum pot for boiling water or quick soups, and a foldable rack to put over the fire like a grill. Backpacking we do dry re-hydrateable meals that require just adding boiling water or on the go stuff like trail mix, granola bars, PB... my favorite is the flavored instant mashed potatos that you just add water too. Most of this food only requires an aluminum pot for boiling water over a small camp stove and individual mess kits.
Chicken cooks up really nice on a camp fire. Daddy used to spear the whole chicken on a wet stick and then we'd set up a couple of other sticks with a V shape, then we'd just rotate it every 10 min or so.....potatoes in the coals, veggies either roasted or cooked in a pot. I remember loving roasting the hot dogs on a stick over the fire, we all cooked our own hot dogs it was fun. I asked my Dad and he said that we also did a lot of "pre cooking" and then we'd vaccum pack it to be heated in a pot of boiling water, then the vaccum bags can be washed easily in the water once it cools a bit and reused.
I'm afraid my idea of "roughing it" is a motel room with no coffeepot, microwave, and refrigerator, and only basic cable...
We "rough it" in a pop-up - usually with electricity. So, we have a small microwave we take, a toaster and a george forman grill. We just eat breakfast & snack at the camper. Then eat 1 big meal out and maybe a small meal if necessary. No wild wilderness for us.
Man you guys are chickens..lol We love to go tenting. We take the little coleman stove and an emergency thing but rarely use it. We love to cook on the fire so much we put a fire ring in our back yard for cooking on and spending the evenings by making smores and campfire dinner packets. I cook pretty much what ever we would eat at home over a campfire. We take coolers full of frozen meat and as long as we keep it from the sun it usually survives quite well... we have had to go hunting a store for ice a few times but not a big deal there. Oh and we do cheat.. we have air mattresses and for stormy weather our tent is big enough we can bring in our folding picnic table and we also have been known to use the battery booster box thing (you know in case the trucks battery dies) to run the portible dvd player to watch movies in the tent durning times of rain.. or just for fun with the kids.
YEAH!!! What Sommer said!!! LOL! I absolutely love cooking out over a fire, and I'm darned good at it, too!!! (Except we don't take a TV or portable DVD player! If it rains too much, we spend a day at the local library!)
I love this thread I read it a while back, but didn't know I would need it. We are camping for the very first time with our family of 6- in a tent. I think we will cheat and get electricity hookups, though. I am feeling kind of overwhelmed, but you ladies have given some great ideas. Any more ideas?
Go ahead and get electric hookup, and be sure to take an electric griddle and possibly an electric skillet. Also, if you get electric, be sure to take one of those big utility lights...you know, with the very long orange cord that you can hang up.
we don't take tv at all. Thats the only we don't do. We have radio and music and we take cards and board games and books to read if its raining. Sometimes we walk in the rain if its warm
We just started camping last summer and we are just giddy for it to be warm again! Last time we went I made cowboy chili, garlic toast and roasted corn on the fire. SOOO good! The only thing we needed was a dutch oven, spoon, and a can opener too! and foil! We forgot that and had to borrow from our neighbors!
I'm so glad Sommer said that about cooking anything she'd cook at home. That's what I do too, but after reading this thread thought maybe I was camping "wrong." Like I should limit myself to special camp foods or something! lol
