Camping Food

Camping is about 10% gear and 40% location and the other 50% revolves around food.  I know people who carry along grills and cooking and eating are their main events while camping.  That's fine, but we usually base camp and use the campground as a launch point.  No time for making complicated meals!  I have just about fine tuned our food and thought I would share it here, as 'what do you eat at camp' is such a common question!  Every conversation I have had with strangers while out camping involves food.

My main goal is to streamline foods to do 3 things-feed my picky eater and provide protein, good fats, carbs and fiber and keep to our budget.

Breakfast:
Grits with added cheese, jerky or pepperoni and sliced apples
Oatmeal with added nuts or nut butter and dried fruit
GF torillas with the options of nut butter and preserves, pepperoni and raw spinach, avocado slices with nuts or cheese.

Lunch:
GF tortillas or crackers and previous options plus tuna and pesto
Protein bar and raw fruit/veggies

Snack:
chips and fruit
teddy grahams and Nutella
goldfish crackers with cherry tomatoes

Dinner:
Rice with soup on top
rice noodles with raw spinach, avocado and nuts
GF pasta with pesto and salad

You can buy just a few things: raw spinach and cherry tomatoes, a bag of apples, a few avocado, a variety of nuts (we like hemp, flax, chia and raw almond), nut butter (hazelnut with cocoa, yum!) and a couple different dried fruits, look for no sugar added.  A pack of string cheese, box or two of protein bars, some bags of pepperoni, a couple boxes of grits and oatmeal, a few bags of microwave rice (you can still heat it in a pot or electric skillet if you don't have a microwave!) some cans or pouches of soup (Campbell's makes a really good curry soup) and a pack of rice noodles, tortillas, pasta, pesto, tuna, some butter and a bag or two of chips and you are set!  It's not a huge variety, but it's enough to keep everyone satisfied and it can all be cooked in a single pot or electric skillet. And it works out to under $2 a meal.  Around $100 for a week's worth, if you plan to also eat a meal out once every day or two.

We also hit the Asian grocery before a trip so we always have along new tea, fun candy, dried seaweed, tiny packets of jello with lychee cubes and rice crackers.  I usually make pancakes on our lazy mornings, I just put the mix in a wide-mouth plastic bottle, shake and pour onto the electric skillet.  We use nut butter, goat cheese and nuts to top them.

See my batter bottle in the background?  It's from Wal-Mart and had their pancake mix in it originally.  Reuse when you can!
Belle Chevre in Elkmont, AL has yummy goat cheese spreads.  We scored some goodies for the trip, but any good soft cheese spread will work.

mmmmmmmm! and the electric skillet wipes clean in about 10 seconds.

I like to stay away from complicated menus and having to bring along several pots and pans.  I do use paper plates and bowls and sporks from Taco Bell. We have water bottles that we drink from.  With a limited variety, everything fits in our limited storage space, too.  I bring along a plastic container with 3 large drawers and meals go in breakfast, lunch and dinner-one per drawer.  Fruit on top of the mini fridge, chips and tortillas on top of the drawers along with a bowl that holds little bottles of (smoked sea) salt, pepper, curry, ginger and cinnamon, which add a good deal of flavor variety, too!

Mingled with various meals out, this is a very good camping menu that covers all of our needs and keeps us nomming all week with no drama.  :)  Some of it can be thrown in a pack for eating on the go, too.