Cooking ideas for a large camping trip

[faronem]

I'm going on a large camping trip--18 adults and 12 kids--and have been asked to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for a two days.

I'll only have access to a couple of little camping propane stoves and a fire pit.

I have plenty of ad hoc recipes which I've used in the past during camping.

My rule has always been to plan to re-use the leftovers (e.g., if a simple curry is for dinner, then curry burritos for breakfast).

However, I'm seriously struggling for good ideas due to the large number of people and serious dietary restrictions.

Basically, I'll need to plan "pesco-vegetarian" meals--fish only, no poultry or meat, and no shellfish!

Dairy and eggs are fine, as is cheese (albeit not *with* the fish ).

Here are several simple ideas I have so far:

Breakfast

-pancakes

-breakfast burritos

-'eggs in a hole' (for kids)

-fried eggs or simple frittata

Lunches

-all the classic sides: cole slaw, potato salad

-grilled cheese

-cold sandwiches

-I'd love to do a paella, but wonder about the limited protein options...

Dinner

-poached fish

-maybe a foil-roasted baked whole fish or two

-grilled corn, grilled potatoes

-asparagus and some sort of compound butter (or fiddleheads, if I can still find them)

-rice and beans

-mac and cheese (for the kids)

I'm not exactly asking for recipes (although that'd be great, too), just ideas and directions where to take this.

Any thoughts or comments would be wonderfully appreciated!

Mark

[HungryC]

I am a big fan of pre-cooking some things and using the frozen food as a partial "ice substitute" in your cooler. A nice soup (I'm thinking corn chowder or some similar seasonal thing) might work, provided that you won't be hand-carrying all of the stuff to your campsite. How about gazpacho? Veggie-friendly, and if you add some ground almonds/almond flour, you can bump up the protein content a bit.

[rooftop1000]

Smoked salmon with eggs

Veggie burgers or veggie sausage

Salmon patties...canned salmon or pouched mixed with "mexi-corn" and mashed potatoes

veggie chile ie campfire stew

roasted whole potatoes with toppings...salsa, sour cream etc

hot pasta with chickpeas and tuna or salmon, oil garlic hot pepper

tracey

[djyee100]

For ideas on prep and planning, you can look at Carole Latimer's Wilderness Cuisine, if you haven't already. Carole's a longtime friend. I've gone on many, many trips where she was the guide & the cook for groups of people. (She's now retired.) A chunk of material from the book is available for reading on Googlebooks.

http://books.google.com/books?id=uu1dw0FZDTsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=wilderness+cuisine&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

One of Carole's tips that people love: for the first day dinner, store lettuce in a plastic garbage bag. When it comes time to serve, pour in the dressing, smoosh and toss around the greens in the garbage bag, then serve. Clean-up means throw away the garbage bag. People can have lots of salad, and there's no salad bowl to wash.

Another go-to dish, which Carole served on almost every trip, was pesto with spaghetti. The pesto can be made entirely ahead of time. You only cook the pasta in camp, and mix the hot pasta with the pesto in the cooking pot. The recipe is here, along with some of Carole's other recipes.

http://www.callwild.com/page.php?id=6&cat=6

A couple years ago I tried the tamal zacahuil, a giant tamale that sometimes feeds a whole village on a feast day. In the version I tried (a puny tamal compared to some of the traditional ones), the cook laid out a large piece of heavy-duty foil on a table, then placed a couple overlapping banana leaves on the foil. Then he put on masa and filling (just like you would make a tamale), a couple more banana leaves, and another layer of foil. Then he wrapped up the whole thing into a secure bundle and grilled it for 1-1 1/2 hours, or however long it took for the masa to dry out to a firm but moist texture. Periodically the cook loosened the wrapping, just enough to poke a spoon or fork inside, to taste and check for doneness. To serve, he just put the tamal on a table, unwrapped it, and let people serve themselves from the giant, showy tamal. People really liked it. Anyway, I throw out this idea--maybe you could make a couple tamals of masa, roasted chiles, cheese and salsa to feed your party.

[Steamtrain]

Tuna mufaletta sandwiches, replace the meat and cheese with tuna. these could be made in advance of the trip.

the tuna sandwich in Colicchio's 'wichcraft book would be a great sandwich for camping.

good luck

[saturnbar]

Vegetarian foil dinner, assuming there will be a decent campfire. Bring the ingredients and let everyone make there own, I would err towards mexican flavors, canned beans, cheese, canned corn, salsa, seasonings, and make a pot of minute rice for everyone to use. Anything to avoid some kind of cooking to order situation. Of course there is always just plain rice and beans. The coleman two burner stoves are reasoanably priced and a huge upgrade over camp stoves if you are so inclined, so much more stable. Tread lightly. ch

[emilyr]

I'd make foil packets in advance. This saves a LOT of room in your packs/coolers. Carrying around whole veggies or chunks of meat is kind of a pain.

[faronem]

Thanks for all the good ideas.

I ended up prepping nearly everything in advance and leaving just the grilling and boiling for the site.

Since this was for all practical purposes, "car camping", I didn't need to hike the food and gear.

I also intentionally selected items which (mostly) didn't require to be refrigerated.

Instead of "cook-to-order", I did "assemble-at-leisure".

I brought foods people were happy to eat for nearly any meal and could be put out while making a fire (or futzing with the campstove propane): crostini grilled on-site the first night with a slew of pre-made toppings (eg. pickled anchos & shallot, caramelized onions, celery/fennel slaw, etc), some simple charcuterie, about 2 gallons of my salsa, fruits, cheeses.

I thought the pesto was a great idea and was also a big hit with the kiddos--it was especially valuable to be able to get hot food quickly into a mob of 5-year-olds.

Main meals ended up being a fish protein with the crostini toppings as the condiments, e.g., grilled red snapper (marinade made prior, but soaked on-site) wrapped in tortillas. Breakfast egg burritos with salsa or coleslaw.

Various sides were big easy hits, like the coleslaw and the grilled whole corn (soaked on site for about an hour before grilling) with a compound ancho butter. I thought we'd re-use the leftover corn for the vege-chili, but it didn't make it that far.

Besides toasted marshmallows and smores, the blueberries and black raspberries with light cream and marsala were a great late night snack.

Thanks again for the good ideas.

[saturnbar]

Wow, count me in next time your catering a camping trip. ch