When you think of family camping trips, the fun of spending time together with your family and nature can sometimes be dampened by the mundane thoughts of "how and what am I going to feed them?". You don't want to bring a ton of food and spend the whole weekend cooking but yet meals over the campfire are a big part of the camping experience. To balance these needs of simplicity, space and fun, our family has a basic list of must-have family camping foods.
Our must-have family camping foods list consists of:
Bisquick Milk in 1/2 gallon jugs Eggs Cheese Orange juice in plastic jug Bacon - thick cut Syrup Butter in plastic tubs Cereal Bread Lunchmeat in resealable packages Fruit - canned and sturdy fresh Chips in tubes Bags of mini carrots Peanut butter Jelly or jam Jugs of water Snack bars (granola, trail mix, etc) Potatoes Steak Onions Green beans - canned Hot dogs Hot dog buns Baked beans Marshmallows Graham crackers Hershey bars Pie filling Diced pickles Ketchup Mustard Mayonnaise Sugar Cinnamon
From this list of foods we can create a weekend full of meals. Many of the items on the list can be used in making more than one meal. And if not, the item is still necessary for the complete camping experience!
The first night is always hot dogs, baked beans, chips and s'mores. This is the first meal my children want. It's quick, easy and has the fun factor of them being able to cook most of it themselves. Great for when you are trying to get camp set up and settled but yet they are clamoring to eat.
The first breakfast is usually pancakes and thick-cut bacon. We take thick cut bacon since it tends to not burn as easily. You can have some eggs with it if you like but eggs are usually the star of another breakfast. Cook some extra bacon for use for dinner tonight. If you are in a hurry have cereal and milk instead.
Coleman 9 cup coffee percolator tends to be a quicker, simpler, no-cook meal for us. We are usually in a hurry to get back to what we were doing or on to the next fun thing. Cold meat sandwiches or peanut butter and jelly with fruit and mini-carrots fit the healthy but quick criteria that we want for this camp meal.
Dinner the second night is usually a bigger deal. After a day of fun in the outdoors we are usually hungry and ready to sit down and relax with a good meal. Our family camping meal of choice for this night is steaks cooked right on the grate over the campfire; potatoes double wrapped in heavy-duty aluminum foil with butter and slices of onion stuck in slits in the potatoes and cooked in the coals; and green beans with left-over bacon from breakfast cooking in a pot on the campfire grate. Yum! For dessert this night (if we have room and the kids always do) we make hobo fruit pies. We save these for the second night because in order to not burn them, they require a slower, more patient cooking. The first night of camping the children are too excited about being there and they do not have the patience to cook slowly.
Make sure you save any of the leftover steak, potatoes and onions from this meal.
If it is just a weekend camping trip, the next morning is usually our grand finale breakfast. It is usually a little later in the morning than the first day. We are all tired from the fun-filled prior day, slept well and are not anxious to start packing up to head home.
In this meal we try to use up what we can. Less to re-pack! We usually have eggs scrambled with the leftover steak, potatoes and onions from the night before. If there isn't any leftover steak, scramble the eggs with some leftover bacon. Cook up a few more potatoes and onions to add to your egg mixture for an excellent skillet breakfast. Use any leftover bread from sandwiches and hobo pies for toast. Top your toast with butter, jelly, cinnamon or sugar that were used in previous meals and drink up partial jugs of milk and orange juice.
The beauty of this basic list of must-have family camping foods is that it is easy to extend if you will be on a longer trip. We have found that just by adding some extra canned vegetables and fruits, canned tuna and chicken, hamburgers, hamburger buns, BBQ sauce, skinless chicken, oatmeal and maybe pasta and sauce, we can get a wide variety of meals that will keep us happy for at least a week or more.
Depending on the length of time you plan to be gone you may need to take a larger quantity of these items or you may want to plan a quick grocery run during your trip. Keep in mind however that if you are camping near a tourist area or far away from a store that a mid-trip grocery run may not be economical or very easy.