Camp Food That's Easy and Cheap!

Are you, like me, a Pinterest junkie?  

I love reading internet posts about the 10 Best Campfire Desserts That You Can Bake with a Magnifying Glass!  

Okay, maybe not that, but there are some incredible posts about Extreme Cooking that include everything from (not kidding here...just search Pinterest!):

Grilling Hot Dogs on Your Car's Engine 

to 

Frying Skunk in Bear Lard!  

This is not one of those posts. 

However, let it be known that I am still an Adventurous and Experimental Cook!  As a vegetarian...then pescatarian...who developed celiac in her Early Geezer Years, I have had to re-educate myself about what to eat and how to make it.  I seldom follow recipes, and generally use the “let’s see what’s getting fuzzy in the fridge and combine it with something else” School of Cooking.

I wasn’t always like this.  No, in my teen years, I ate Everything.  I could eat a pan of brownies and never gain weight, and I considered a vanilla milkshake the Perfect Breakfast Food. Nutrition and healthy eating were not on my radar, and I seldom actually tasted the food.  I simply wolfed it down.

It didn’t matter to me that my mother wasn’t a great cook.  She used Seven different casserole recipes and rotated them throughout the week.  There was tuna casserole, spaghetti with meat sauce, chipped beef on toast, ham and potatoes au gratin (oolala, French!), chicken and rice au vin (OOLALA, French, with Wine!), hamburger helper, and roast beef with carrots and potatoes.  (Technically this last meal was not a casserole, but Mom cooked our typical Sunday dinner in one big roasting pan until it was all tenderly charred.)

But it was my mother who started my interest in cooking by making me join the Camp Fire Girls.

As the working mom of 3 girls, she felt it was important that we all learn the values of WOHELO!  That was the ersatz Native American word for WOrk, HEalth, and LOve. Therefore, Mom became a Camp Fire Girl Leader and signed us up when we were just "Bluebirds" and kept us in Camp Fire until we graduated to the "Horizon Level." Camp Fire is now gender-inclusive, but it has always been focused on outdoor activities. 

Please don’t confuse Girl Scouts with Camp Fire Girls.  They sell cookies.  We sold peanuts.  

Another important difference:  Janis Joplin was a Camp Fire Girl!

The problem was that Mom wasn’t an outdoorsy kind of girl herself.  As a club Leader, she preferred doing Charitable Work, rather than participating in outdoor recreation.  Her Camp Fire Girls sewed sock puppets for chronically ill patients, boxed-up canned food for the poor, and collated stacks of literature to promote the United Givers Fund.  (In the picture below, I'm the little blonde Bluebird on the left!  I was SO cute!)

Through community service, we absorbed the worthy lesson of Wohelo.  BUT after making what seemed like the 700^th sock puppet in my childhood career, I rebelled, “Where is the Camping in Camp Fire Girls???”  

I don’t believe my two older sisters had ever asked that question.  And I think this led to my Mom deciding that, after 15 years of leading clubs full of snot-nosed, self-centered Mean Girls, she could FINALLY retire – if she could only first move her youngest into a club where the Leader enjoyed camping.

That’s how I learned to love camping!

The new club Leader took us on camping trips in Maryland and Virginia.  (On my recent Geezer trips, I have returned to a few of those same parks!)  I learned to use a compass, and identify tree leaves, and study clouds for weather prediction. 

I also learned to make campfire food:  S’mores, of course, but also Porky-Pines (huge burger and rice meatballs that bobbed in a greasy tomato-based sauce), skewered Shish-Kebabs, and hand-cranked popcorn.  And I learned Survivalist Extreme Cooking methods!  

I’ve never tried to warm my food on the car engine, never tried to skin a skunk; but I have baked chicken on a rotating spit over an open fire, and in an aluminum foil reflective oven, and in the sand - buried all day with glowing charcoal briquets.  Those experiences made me realize that Cooking can be adventurous, experimental, and fun!

So, back to the point of this post:  

How do you make camping food easy and cheap?

I have just 4 Easy and Cheap Tips to share with you:

Tip #1. Don’t buy a lot of weird stuff you will never eat.  (If you really liked beef jerky and overpriced dehydrated stew, you’d be eating that stuff at home when you return from camping.  But you don’t, do you?) 

Look in your fridge and pantry.  Is anything beginning to look like it needs to be eaten soon?  Then pack and eat that first!  That’s easy, right?  Wasting food is expensive - so don’t do it!

Tip #2.      Generally homemade food is cheaper than buying pre-made, packaged food.  Use plastic zip-able baggies for packing most of your homemade items (or packaged food that you’ve already opened).  Potato salad, apple sauce, raisins, and hummus, for example, are easily stored in baggies and will fit nearly any odd-shaped space left in your cooler or food bag.  

If some items require a little more protection to maintain their integrity (like raw eggs, tortilla chips, and cooked beans), store them in sealable hard plastic containers.  Baggies and containers can be washed and reused to store any leftovers during the trip. 

 

Tip #3:  Plan your menus in advance, and bring appropriate amounts for the number of people in your camping group.  For instance, if you like to go camping alone, there’s no need to bring entrees that feed a family of six.  Unless you want to eat the same meal for 6 days in a row.  

As for planning in advance, I’m actually kind of nutsy cuckoo about project management and spreadsheets.  For most trips, I create a day-by-day chart that pairs up my anticipated activities with the food I’m bringing. 

 By the way I also use this chart to plan the specific clothes I’ll bring, but that’s another topic for another post….

Tip #4:  Have a Plan B.  The best laid plans often go awry, so be ready with a contingency plan.  Be willing to switch around your plans and adjust an entrée to include the wild food you surprisingly find on your trip.

Also,  I always pack at least one EXTRA no-refrigeration-required meal that is Super Simple in case:

 🍋 The weather is so bad I can’t start a fire or keep a propane stove lit;

  🍋 I accidentally (or intentionally) extend the camping trip by a day;

 🍋 The ice in my cooler melts too soon;

 🍋 My other food is eaten by wild critters; or 

 🍋 I am just Really Hungry (which is almost always.  BUT could be serious if the temperature suddenly drops or if I've exerted myself physically - for instance, by falling out of a hammock.  Again.)

Examples of these Super Simple meals are:  tuna packets (which often come with their own little spoons!), packaged apple sauce, canned vegetables, oranges or other hard fruit, candy bars (nobody said this food had to be good for you!), peanut butter, and Camp Fire Girl peanuts.

There.  In true Pinterest style, I’ve given you “4 Tips for Easy and Cheap Camping Food.”  And, in true Geezer style, I’ve made you wade through a lot of other stuff you weren’t expecting before I got to my point! 

One more Geezer tip:  Eat All Your Vegetables!

Next week:  A Pony Tail