Meals for Car Camping

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Permalink Reply by plexy on August 8, 2011 at 11:17am

Hi Nancy!  I hate to state the obvious but we always try to pack dried fruit and nuts with us when we're camping or hiking.  We just got back from a great hiking adventure and needed to carry absolutely everything in a backpack so the food needed to be dense in nutrition and also very lightweight.  A favorite treat for on the trail was energy balls.  Here is the recipe:

1 cup each toasted sunflower and sesame seeds; 1 cup rolled oats; 1 cup chocolate chips; 1 cup raisins; 1 cup dried cranberries; 1/2 cup cocoa powder; 2 cups peanut butter; 1/2 cup honey; 1 1/2 cups toasted coconut (for coating)

Put everything except coconut in a large bowl and mix all together well with your hands.  You may need a little more honey to hold it all together.  Roll walnut sized balls into balls and roll into coconut.  Store energy balls in an airtight container in the fridge for up to one week or in the freezer for a couple of months.

You can vary the ingredients and use almond butter, for instance, instead of peanut butter.  We didn't have honey around once and used brown rice syrup which was delicious.

A favorite treat!

~plexy~

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Cavillones on August 8, 2011 at 12:45pm

Thanks, Plexy! Sounds like a great snack. One of the benefits of car camping is that we have the luxury of making full meals, so I'm looking for creative meal ideas. Thanks for the snack idea!

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Permalink Reply by plexy on August 8, 2011 at 1:12pm

Where are you heading Nancy?  One of the pleasures when we're traveling by car is cooking up something local we find along the way.  For instance the Oregon Coast trip we had some memorable meals of local seafood like crab and clams - fabulous!

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Galbraith on October 28, 2011 at 4:04pm

Hi Nancy - We do a lot of car camping, and I enjoy cooking over the fire. To do that, I use foil packets - but that tends to be the only garbage and it's easy clean-up. Recently we did fajitas - we cooked the chicken in a foil packet, the onions and peppers in another packet, and warmed the tortillas. You can add cheese, salsa, sour cream - what ever you like.On another recent trip on the coast of Maine, every night we cooked fresh seafood in a foil packet. I served it over pasta or rice with butter and lemon. If you were going to prepare things ahead of time at home, you could remove all the packaging and prepare all the vegetables, then store things in their foile packet inside of a ziploc bag. Then, in to the cooler.

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Permalink Reply by Kate Hedstrom on January 18, 2012 at 4:13pm

I go car camping a lot and we're always looking for ways to simplify and cut back on stuff to wash since water taps are usually in short supply and we dislike having to use a lot of soap in wild places. A few months ago I came across a wonderful book called The Camping Cookbook by Annie Bell. Her basic approach to meal planning is very useful and adaptable. Most of the flavors are Mediterranean inspired and we've really enjoyed all the recipes we've tried so far. Hope that helps!

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Permalink Reply by island health on January 24, 2012 at 2:42pm

growing up in girl scouts we always did the foil packet method which is a lot of fun. One of my favorite desserts from that era was banana boats: Take one banana, peel back one side, scoop out and eat some of the banana, put marshmallows and chocolate chips in the scooped out space, wrap in foil and place in fire until melted. Oooey Gooey!

For dinners, I would suggest making soups and casseroles, put them in glass jars like recycled spagetti sauce jars. Reheat the food over the fire in a pot with water in it. It will heat up in no time at all. You could pack some of your favorite at-home meals and take them on the road. You could even do tacos this way, just reheat the mexican spiced ground beef mixture and layer it onto taco shells with all of your favorite fixings.

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