Camp food - Visit 1
In the great tradition of s’mores, thinking about camping always brings me around to food. Good food, dried food, dehydrated stuff, dense food, kept from animals food, and dirt-brushed-off-of-it food. Oh, yes, don’t forget ashes-picked-out-of-it food.
Everything does taste better when you’re camping, from plain ole hotdogs, to omelettes, to cherry pie, to steaks. Lately I’ve been exposed to a bit more of the gourmet variety of preparation, thanks to Food Network, Alton Brown and America’s Test Kitchen, but they don’t often head for the campfire/coals/campstove with a castiron dutch oven/skillet/griddle or lightweight water pot. Here are a couple of my old favorites - hiking breakfast, refrigerator-access dessert, and a casserole that’d work great over coals.
Recipe: Hiking Breakfast
Ingredients: graham crackers, pb, honey and oranges
Steps: Smear peanut butter and honey on graham crackers and sandwich together. Peel oranges before you head out, leave the peels in the trash at base camp. Put everything in ziplocks and bring plenty of water to drink. Easily prepared and packed the night before, this is delicious. Wake up well before dawn, climb to the highest point you can get to enjoy the sunrise. Always makes me think of hiking up Kokernot in the Davis Mountains of west Texas. Bring your plastic bags back, filled with any scraps from previous hikers.
Recipe: Legendary Peanut Butter Pie
Ingredients: Graham cracker crust, vanilla pudding, peanut butter, cool whip on top
Steps:
1. Make your basic graham cracker crust (1 1/2 cups ground graham crackers, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/3 cup melted butter) and press it into a pan. Round, square, whatever - be glad you have a pan. It really should have sides.
2. Don’t cook it. Unless you just must, then only about 8 minutes at 350.
3. Open a #10 can of food service vanilla pudding and measure out 3 cups into a bowl. I don’t know why their stuff tastes so good, but if you can’t get it, use the instant kind.
4. Add 1 cup of creamy peanut butter to the pudding and mix until you think your arm will fall off. It needs to be mixed in really well. OK, that may be too much peanut butter for some of you babies out there - adjust accordingly.
5. Pour the pudding/pb mixture into the (cool) crust.
6. Layer as much cool whip as you want over the top.
7. Refrigerate until you can’t wait any more.
8. Eat all you can then start a food fight with the rest. Best to wait until the night the lodge has to be mopped anyway. !!Warning!! Bears and small critters do like this - don’t wear it to bed.
Recipe: Mexican casserole
Ingredients: 1 canned chicken (sue bee whole chicken - take out all 5 bones and cut into bitesize pieces), 10 or 12 corn tortillas cut into fourths, can of cream of mushroom soup, small chopped onion (saute it if you must), 1 or 2 cans chopped green chiles, 1 cup grated cheese.
Steps:
1. Prepare a heating source to 350 degrees Farenheit. Coals, oven, whatever you will. You will need a large-ish dutch oven or casserole. Don’t forget aluminum foil if you’re using a dutch oven - cleanup will be much easier.
2. Get ready to layer. Start with the tortillas. You’ll make 3 or four layers, so use your math. A couple of tortillas on the bottom, then put about 1/4 of the chicken on that, spoon on some of the onion, about 1/4 of the soup, 1/2 can of green chiles, then a big handful of cheese. Repeat.
3. Top off with cheese and cook at 350 for about 35 minutes, until hot hot hot all the way through.
There you have them, my first favorites, but not my last.
