Food For Your Camping Trip
The food you bring on your camping trip can make or break the whole trip. Your body will burn more calories while your camping simply because you are going to be more active during the day that you would be at home or at work. If you have kids, the last thing you want is hearing thhem complain about how hungry they are as mealtime approaches.
You’re not going to have the convenience of your kitchen. You won’t be able to just open the fridge whip up a quick meal. without prior planning. In general, you’re going to want to keep it simple: hamburgers, hotdogs, pre-made meals that just require heating. Freeze-dried camping food is great for the first time camper. You don’t have to keep it cold to avoid spoiling. There are companies that specialize in pre-made meals especially for the camper. Mountain House and Backpackers Country are two of the most popular.
Camping Food Recipes
You can Google “camping recipies” and find many cookbooks and recipies. Most of the recipies are free for the downloading. Things to consider when researching camp recipes include the normal considerations you have at home such as who likes what. But you aso have special considerations like how long does the meal take to prepare? Will you be out sightseeing and have to bring food with you for the day? What are the storage requirements for the food? In general, it is difficult to keep food cold for any length of time when you are camping. And it’s pretty much impossible to keep food frozen, so you’ll have to plan accordingly.
The fewer utinsels required to prepare the food the better. Doing the dishes while camping is always a chore. The two main reasons are 1) you don’t have a sink and 2) any hot water you need you have to heat yourself, either on a portable camp stove or campfire. If you can get by using one or two pots or pans during food preparation you’ll be much better off. We’ll talk more about camping stoves in Step 5 - Camping Equipment.
Cooking while camping doesn’t mean the food has to taste like cardboard. You can probably won’t reach four-star status with your meals, but there’s no reason you can’t have meals that you and your family enjoy. I’ve always found that food prepared while camping always tastes better than the same meal prepared at home. I’m sure it’s because my expectations are lower but whatever the reason, it will make it easier to keep your fellow campers happy.
Food for the Kids
Children love to get involved, and the beauty of camping is that the recipes are usually simple, easy and fun. The kids will enjoy them even more if you let them modify the camp recipes and have some cooking fun. Before your next family camping trip, gather up some kid-friendly camping recipes. Camping dessert recipes are fun and easy for kids to make, and the whole family enjoys eating them.
Camping Meal Planning
Meals should be planned around the “core” entree, but like buying a car it’s the extras that make it more enjoyable. Meals should be made as simple as possible. Meals take more time to prepare at the campground but it’s also one of the jobs that everyone seems to want to help out with. Meals around the campfire are just as much the center of camping life as meals around the kitchen table at home.
Freeze-Dried Camping Food
A quick search of the web turns up numerous companies producing freeze-dried foods for backpacking, including many vegetarian options. One of the best types of camping food is freeze-dried food or dehydrated food. Nowadays, people climbing the Himalayas, exploring the Poles, competing in offshore races, canoers and all kinds of travelers and globetrotters take very light freeze-dried food with them. Dehydrated or freeze-dried camping food is great for hiking, backpacking, or camping meals because it doesn’t have to be kept cold to avoid spoiling. Camping, backpacking, or hiking food that’s freeze-dried or dehydrated can reduce weight by 60% to 90%.
With some tasty camping food in your pack, you can make sure you won’t go hungry. Take easy to carry, high energy camping food to fuel your expeditions and outdoor adventures. If you’re used to eating at gourmet restaurants, no matter what type of camping food you pack you’ll probably be disappointed but you’ll still have fun. You’ll also want to consider animal resistant camping food containers especially if you’re going to bear country. Please check the local area for suggestions on camping food storage and how to deal with trash. Good camping food is easy, light-weight, and served hot quickly.
Food Storage
One last very important consideration is food storage. You’re going to be in the woods. There’s a lot of animals in the woods. Typically you won’t see them during the day, but I guarantee they’re out there. Any food left out at night will get eaten by morning. If you’re going to be in an area where bears or larger animals live, you’ll need to be extra cautious, bears can easily smell food inside a cooler and rip it open. Besides losing your food, you definitely don’t want a bear spending any length of time at your campsite. And you don’t won’t do surprise one in the middle of the night if you get up to use the facilities (your favorite tree) or check on the kids. One solution to the animal problem that works well for many campers is to throw a rope over a tree branch and hoist all your food up in the air. It needs to be high enough that a bear standing up can’t reach it and far enough away from the tree trunk and branch that the bear will just give up and move on to the next campsite. It’s similar to the old story about surprising a dangerous animal if you’re in the woods. You don’t have to be able to run faster that the animal. You just have to be able to run faster than the person you’re with. You don’t have to keep your food as secure as Fort Knox. You just have to keep it more secure than the campers around you.