Camping: Meals

In what I hope becomes a multi part journal series, I’d like to share bit about what we bring camping. Since I get the most questions about our menu, I thought I’d start there. Using our most recent trip to Groton State Forest as our guide I’ll add in a few other camping menu items that we frequently eat when camping at the end. Chris and I just returned from a three night camping trip, the first solo trip without our children! As our oldest is 20, it’s been a long time coming.

Day 1

Mid afternoon - Snacks in the form of soft farm cheese spread, summer sausage, cherries, crackers, smoked salmon spread.

Dinner - Grilled yogurt chicken and a few store bought salads. This grilled chicken is one of our favorites! Shortly after we set up camp I prepped the chicken. We bought a 2 pound whole chicken, with the thought that it would feed us for a few meals. I spatchcocked the chicken to cook faster over the fire, and added it to a gallon sized ziplock bag with the following; a 5 oz plain yogurt, juice from half a lime, finely chopped cilantro, a minced clove of garlic, teaspoon of zaatar seasoning, and salt and pepper. Get a good bed of coals going in the fire, and cook directly on the grate until done. We ate about half of it, and removed the rest of meat from the bone into a bag to be eaten on our last night. [Sidenote - I don’t use plastic ziplock bags very often, preferring to use leftover breadbags or glass containers, but I have found that I can fit so much more in our cooler if I utilize them for things like leftovers, herbs, or cut up fruit.]

Day 2

Breakfast - Loaded Griddled Bagels. I buttered both sides of a bagel and toasted them in a pan on our cookstove. [Sidenote - We have a two burner Coleman cookstove, and a single burner unit that we use primarily for boiling water for our coffee. Usually our two burner gets a lot more use, but this time around we only used it for toasting our bagels.] I smeared the bagels with cream cheese, salmon spread, and finely sliced radishes and cucumbers. It was so delicious! We’ve done versions of this before, a bagel bar if you will. I toast a bunch of bagels, and put out a spread of cream cheese and various savory and sweet toppings and let everyone make their own.

[Sidenote - Let’s talk coffee! After years of using an iconic camping enamel percolator, and then moving to a smaller plastic camping style French press, we have finally settled on a single cup pour over and filters. It’s so easy and has resulted in the best (and most similar) tasting coffee to our Chemex at home.]

Lunch - Baguette and snacks. Salami, cheddar cheese, fruit, veggies, salsa + chips. We also had a slice of pizza at Marshfield General Store post hike, it was delicious!

Dinner - Grilled Swedish Meatballs, Malfouf Salad (Lebanese coleslaw), and caprese salad. The meatballs were store bought and we skewered them and grilled them over the fire. [Sidenote - Can we talk for a minute about just how great Mehuron’s is in Waitsfield?!? Such a great selection of deli salads, dips, spreads, etc! Perfect place for filling the cooler before heading out on an adventure.] I cut up tomatos and smoked mozzerella and tore up basil from our garden, topped with a little olive oil and salt + pepper - it was the perfect appetizer while we waited for the fire to get ready to grill. Malfouf Salad is in standard rotation in our house and this was an easy camping version. I bought a bag of ready shredded cabbage and carrots from the store and added it to a gallon sized ziplock bag with the following; juice from half a lemon, olive oil, finely chopped mint, dill, parsley, a few green onions, teaspoon of zaatar seasoning, and salt + pepper.

Day 3

Breakfast - Yogurt with maple syrup, blueberries, and crunchy honey sesame topping. I forgot granola so I smashed up a few of these crunchy sesame and nut bars that I buy at the Middlebury Coop.

Lunch - More snacks, you know the drill by now…

Dinner - Grilled chicken and slaw wraps and caprese salad. Using flour tortillas we layered the leftover slaw, shredded chicken, and fresh herbs into a Mediterranean style taco. It was delicious, and a marvelous way to use up our leftovers. Will definitely do something like this in the future.

Day 4

Breakfast - Bagels, cream cheese, fruit. A quick meal as we packed up to head home. I had planned on doing some hardboiled eggs, sauteed radishes, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes, but we just were in the mood to pack up quick, and so we settled on eating what was easy.

Additional Ideas + Meals

Breakfasts - Pancakes, eggs + bacon, oatmeal, breakfast burritos/wraps. When I was little my mom would buy the six pack of individual sugary cereals as a special treat, sadly now instead of cardboard and wax paper, they are all plastic containers. Sometimes I’ll buy a box of donuts to spare me cooking a meal.

Lunches - We rely heavily on snacky type lunches, with a variety of options to graze on. But some other ideas include sandwiches or wraps, or hotdogs. If we’ve been successful in our fishing endeavors often we will have a small fish fry as an addition to what ever we are eating.

Dinners - So many options here; we’ve made pizza, chili, grilled meats, made numerous side salads, and paella is a yearly meal during our Memorial Day Weekend camping trip. There have been times that the weather is so dreary I’ve made soup.

Do you have a favorite meal when camping? I’d love to hear what you eat while camping.