family camping » Camp Cooking

New Self-Contained Coffee Maker

Roy Scribner — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:19:20 +0000

I remember when Brunton® introduced the BrewFire™ back in 2008 and thought it was a great concept, at the time. No fire to start, no jockeying for room on the camp stove – just light the internal burner and let it do it’s thing. Now Coleman® has launched their own self-contained coffee maker and it is a lot cheaper than Brunton’s (now Primus™).

Coleman propane coffee maker with stainless steel carafe

The Coleman looks like an effective unit, with a nice wrap-around windscreen in the back, and a stainless steel carafe. My current Coleman stop-top coffee maker has a glass carafe, that I have somehow not broken in three or four years, but a metal carafe makes a lot of sense. Coleman also offers a model with a glass carafe for $10 less.

As much as I am attracted to this self-contained concept, I am not sure I am willing to part with $80 or $90 just for that convenience. I have gotten a lot of use out of my $40 Coleman (I see they are now $50) and other than the glass carafe, there is really nothing on it that can wear-out or break.

It would be nice to free-up some space on the stove, but I am getting by with getting up a little earlier than everyone else (easy to do with my family ), brewing my coffee and pouring a few extra cups into a Thermos® to keep it hot.

What are you currently using for brewing coffee at the campsite? Does a self-contained unit interest you?

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Montana Family Camping Favorites

Roy Scribner — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:22:54 +0000

This is a guest post by Tara Alley, a freelance writer from Montana. If you would like to guest post on CampingBlogger, please see the guest posting page for more information.

As a Montana girl who fell in love with the outdoors at a very young age, I’ve been on my share of camping trips. And let’s face it: while I love hiking, fishing, and playing cards in the sunshine, you name it, my favorite part of camping is, by far: the food. Camping gives you an excuse to eat and make delicious, semi-out of the ordinary foods in often “unique” ways that you don’t normally get to experience. Cinnamon rolls and an open fire? Yes please!

And, while my tastes and preferences may have changed slightly over the years, there are some meals & treats that we happened to discover that will stay a part of my repertoire for years and years to come.

Camping Breakfast

Nothing beats breakfast when you’re camping, it can even make crawling out of sleeping bags into the chilly morning air completely worth it. (This does not apply, however, if breakfast equals a bowl of instant oatmeal) Our basic breakfast is pretty standard: eggs, pancakes, bacon/sausage, etc. But, it’s my mom’s special touches that add the difference: her potatoes and her homemade caramel rolls. These take a tiny bit of prep work, so stick with me!

The secret to the potatoes is boiling. Buy baby reds and boil them completely beforehand. Peel and then dice into small cubes. You can freeze them or refrigerate them, depending on what your particular cooling needs are for camping. Fry with a touch of butter and salt and pepper. They are divine. You might opt to skip everything else and just eat a bowl of potatoes. Just maybe. Probably depends if you have homemade caramel rolls.

As for caramel rolls on a camping trip, well, those are rather indescribable. If you’re up for it, you can try whipping up your very own beforehand, just remember: you can never have enough butter nor enough brown sugar. This means extra caramel. And, you’re camping! It’s the one time when you can eat lots of caramel! You’ll burn it off on a hike, no problem. My mom also likes to add walnuts into the caramel, which is like little bit of heaven in your mouth. If you’re not quite game for baking them on your own (they are work, I cannot lie) then you could easily grab some Cinnabon or Pillsbury from the store. Just make ahead of time, and warm to a “dripping-caramel-stage” over your fire.

Tinfoil Dinner

Foil meals are easy to cook - and no mess! (slworking2 on Flickr)

This is so good it’s tough to leave it alone as just a “camping-food.” And it’s oh-so-simple too! All you need:

Veggies (Our favorite combo: red and green peppers, mushrooms, onions)
Potatoes (Baby reds!)
Kielbasa sausage
Italian dressing
Butter (If you wanna make it really good)

Slice up everything, layer on a sheet of tinfoil. Pour Italian dressing over, add a dash of salt and pepper and a touch of butter (optional). Pull sides of tinfoil together and roll together on each side, forming a packet. Place over fire and cook. So simple and so good!

BBQ – Uptown Dining

Our family finally started taking along a small portable barbecue about a year ago, and it revolutionized our meals! This is especially useful for places like Montana, where it’s overly dry much of the year and fires are banned, making grilled hamburgers and hotdogs a no-go.

You can really step up your camp cooking a notch with offerings char-broiled steaks and marinated grilled chicken breasts. You can also microwave/bake potatoes partially before you go and then toss onto the barbecue with your meat or wrap. Corn on the cob is another great BBQ addition. This is what we like to call high-class camping. (Throw on hotdogs and hamburgers for the kids, perhaps?).

Treats

Finally, when it comes to camping, the treats are a must. For a big, welcome-back from a day scouting the great outdoors, you should always come home to:

*Monster Cookies (Only the best camping cookies ever!)

Ingredients:

1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup butter, softened
1-1/4 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 cups quick-cooking oats
3 cup M&M’s (or more!)
2 cups all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, cream peanut butter, butter and sugars. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add baking soda and vanilla. Add oats and M&M’s; let stand for 10 minutes. Stir in flour.

Shape into medium sized balls. Place on greased baking sheets. Gently flatten cookies. Bake at 325° for 15-18 minutes. *Adapted from Taste of Home.

For kicks, you should also pack along bags of pre-popped popcorn, a variety of trail mixes, and things like Twizzlers and gummy bears. Just for fun.

Tara Alley is a freelance writer from Montana who is passionate about the outdoors, camping, and living a more sustainable lifestyle. She is currently writing alongside Coffee Home Direct and you can follow her on Twitter @hopesiempre.

See also…

Two Kid Friendly Camping Meals
5 Marshmallow Sticks for Family Camping
Camp Cooking Strategy

15-Minute Camping Meals

Roy Scribner — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:10:32 +0000

One of the things I really like about family camping is cooking. I don’t get to cook many meals during the week, so when we are camping, I like to make up for that by getting creative with our camping meals. Getting creative doesn’t mean spending a lot of time on meal preparation, though. Here are some great camping recipes that don’t take a lot of time to prepare.

Fish Tacos

Fish tacos (photo by Tammy Camp on Flickr)

Usually, when you think of fish tacos, you think fried fish. They’re just a good – maybe even better, with grilled fish, though. Fish grills-up fast, usually about 4-minutes per side, so it is fast and easy to load everybody up with fish tacos, for lunch or dinner.

1 bag shredded cabbage
1 bag corn tortillas
1 lbs. of any firm fish
Top with your favorite salsa or spicy tartar sauce

Bonus tip: Squeeze a fresh lime over the cabbage and add an avocado slice, or two.

Pizza

Grilling pizzas on one of our camping trips, this summer

I have talked about pizza before, because it’s one of our favorite camping meals and it’s really easy to make. We usually cheat and pickup some pizzas at Trader Joe’s, because they are really convenient and are actually good. Sometimes we make our own, though, which is a lot of fun for the kids.

Pizza crust, such as Boboli
Tomato sauce
Sliced pepperoni
Favorite veggies, sliced at home and packed in a resealable bag

Bonus tip: If you are cooking your pizza on an open grill, the vegetables will not get cooked before the crust is done. For some people, crispy vegetables on their pizza is just fine, but if that’s not for you then steam your vegetables in a foil pouch before topping the pizza with them.

BBQ Chicken

Grilling chicken over the campfire (photo by Desirae on Flickr)

Always a favorite, chicken grills-up great and it’s a quick meal to make. Cutting-up a chicken at the campsite is a messy affair, so we do that at home and package it up in 1-gallon resealable bags (and freeze them, if it is going to be one of our day 3 or 4 meals). At home, I always make my own bbq sauce, but for camping we buy jar so that we don’t have to worry about packaging and spoilage. Trader Joe’s is one of our favorites – and one of the few bbq sauces on the market that doesn’t use high-fructose corn syrup.

Bonus tip: Pack a brush for brushing-on the bbq sauce.

Hamburgers & hotdogs

What's hamburgers and hotdogs without fries? We are toasting these over the campfire, while we grill the meat

Seriously, Roy, hamburgers and hotdogs? I know this is the most common camping meal there is, but there is a reason for that: Kids lover hamburgers and hotdogs and they are quick and easy to make. You don’t have to settle for the kids-meal version, though. Substitute spicy sausage for the hotdogs, jazz-up your hamburgers with onions, mushrooms and all the fixin’s.

Bonus tip: After you flip those burgers and hotdogs, throw the buns on the grill and toast them.

Fajitas

Grilling fajitas over the campfire (photo by Jay Wilson on Flickr)

If hamburgers and hotdogs are the great American outdoor classic, then grilled skirt steak on a tortilla is the Latin American equivalent. Skirt steak is thin, so it grills-up fast, but it’s tough so you need to marinate it for 24-hours before your trip. Everybody has their favorite marinades – I like to start with a bottle of Corona or Pacifica beer and a cup of fresh lime juice. From there, it’s just a matter of what I have in the pantry – cayenne or jalapeño pepper, a dash of oregano, several cloves of garlic – it’s all good.

1 lbs. skirt steak
1 bag tortillas
2 bell peppers, sliced
1 medium onion, sliced

Bonus tip: Olive oil is not a camping staple for most people, but you will need it to stir-fry the onions and peppers for your fajitas.

See also…

Comparison of Trail Snack Nutrition

Roy Scribner — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:25:44 +0000

One of our favorite family camping activities is hiking, particularly in the mountains where the elevation provides a welcome relief from the valley heat. Whether we are hiking one mile or five, we never leave camp without the backcountry essentials, including trail snacks for everybody. The kids all have their favorite trail snacks and we bring a variety of different types with us, to help keep the kids (okay, parents, too!) motivated. Have you ever wondered how the various trail snacks compare, from a nutritional standpoint?

Snack Bars

Snack bars, like Nature Valley® Sweet & Salty Bars and Granola Bars, are one of our staples on shorter hikes and even for the kids, on longer hikes. These bars taste great and are more substantial than lighter snacks.

Energy Bars

In cold weather and on longer hikes, I like the extra substance of an energy bar. These hearty bars, like Clif®, Luna® and PowerBar® Performance® are a bit much for kids, but sometimes I will share a bite, or two.

Trail Mix

Trail mix is a popular trail snack for the kids, although we have to keep an eagle-eye on them, or they will pick out all of the M&Ms. Of course, trail mix doesn’t have to have M&Ms. Dried fruit also mixes well with the traditional peanuts, raisins, almonds and cashews.

Dried Fruit

Dried fruit is tasty and really easy to pack, so it’s no wonder that it is one of the most popular trail snacks, for many people. From tart cranberries to super-sweet mangoes, there are dried fruits to suit every taste.

Fresh Fruit

It may not pack quite as easily as dried fruit, but fresh fruit is a wholesome and juicy trail snack, that is particularly welcome on warm days. Just remember to pack out the peels!

Resources:
Nature Valley
Clif Bar & Company
PowerBar
Sun-Maid
CalorieKing

See also…

Vegetable Shiskabobs

Roy Scribner — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:41:12 +0000

We did something a little different, for veggies, on our recent family camping trip through northern California and Oregon: Shiskabobs! This proved to be a great way to prepare vegetables, along with some steaks, on our camping grill – and the kids even seemed to like them.

Marshmallow roasting forks work great for grilling vegetables

We have tried to grill shiskabobs before, but we used the regular wood shiskabob sticks and it ended-up being quite a mess. The problem with the individual, thin, sticks is that they don’t hold the vegetables very well and a lot of them fall off onto the grill and into the stove. This time, however, we tried using our marshmallow roasting forks.

We have the cheap stainless steel roasting forks and, while they are not the best for roasting marshmallows because the marshmallows can slide off the end if you are not careful, the double prongs did a great job of holding the vegetables. The double prongs also made it much easier to flip the shiskabobs on the grill, which was really hard to do with the wooden shiskabob sticks, because the vegetables would rotate on the sticks.

Use leftover grilled vegetables for breakfast the next morning

This worked best on our Weber® Q® grill, because the lid traps the heat around the vegetables so that they cook all around and not just on the bottom. I think it would work on an open grill, or a campfire, too, but it would probably take longer to cook them – and tougher to cook them evenly. We have previously steamed vegetables in foil pouches – and that worked really well in the campfire.

Whether you grill vegetables shiskabob-style, or steam them in foil pouches, one of the big benefits is that you have leftover mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and peppers for an egg scramble the next morning. Targeting multiple meals is always a good idea, because it reduces the number of different foods that you have to pack, and it simplifies your menu.

I was planning on a marshmallow roasting fork upgrade, this summer, but since they worked so well for vegetable shiskabobs, I am rethinking that idea.

See also…