keesan
|
|
response 15 of 23:
| 
Jun 16 05:50 UTC 2003 |
We usually bought bakery bread. About once a year we got hold of white bread
(when I was about 10) and had contests to see how many times you could flatten
in (remove the crust first) and fold it in half. It ended up as a cube about
1/2" or less across. What else can one do with wonderbread, as a creative
kid? Do kids still go to daycamp in the woods, or is it just computer camp,
sports camp, etc.? We used to ride the camp bus there every day singing songs
with 100 verses. I remember rotten orange mountain ash berries and a very
muddy pond and lots of raw Bisquick. They must have fed us something else
as well.
|
jaklumen
|
|
response 16 of 23:
|
Jun 16 07:43 UTC 2003 |
Well, it's been years since I did any real camping, but I've done some
backcountry camping that required those small propane stoves. They
just consisted of a small propane canister and a switch with metal
prongs to hold your pot. Because you have to pack your way into these
areas, you have to pack light anyway, so bringing say, a water
purifier/filter and dried food was best. Pasta, dried stew, Tang,
cocoa, all seemed to work well.
If weight is not a concern and you can pack a bag of charcoal
briquettes, then there is dutch oven cooking, and I understand there's
a lot of material on that. Fruit cobblers seem to cook well in these
cast iron pots.
I had a book called "Roughing It Easy" but it suggested using a lot of
tinfoil which I thought was a REAL waste.
The utensils I like or liked to take with me on camping trips were a
double-pronged stick (yes, I bought it) for cooking hot dogs and the
like, and a set of knife, large spoon, and fork. If I could find a
large metal spork, I'd take that. I did have a set of pots and pans
that fit into each other and were belted together.
When corn (maize) comes into season, I have always loved just getting
them from the store with all the husk on and cooking them straight on
the coals. When most of the husks were charred off, the corn was
ready. The only treat I've missed was living or being on a farm to
pick it fresh enough so it could be cooked quickly to stay sweet.
|
void
|
|
response 18 of 23:
|
Jun 28 22:22 UTC 2003 |
I returned from my annual camping trip on Monday. I was car camping,
not backpacking, so saving a lot of room wasn't a huge consideration,
but I still repackaged a lot of the food I took with me because I
generally can't eat an entire package at a time.
Like slynne, I have a woodburning camping stove. It's called a
Sierra Zip Stove (http://www.zzstove.com/sierra.html) and I love it.
The most efficient fuel I have found for it so far is charcoal from
other people's camp fires. Charcoal briquettes don't work at all well
in it, so I use either sticks and pinecones or camp fire charcoal.
I have also found that if I cover the outsides of the pots I use on it
with a thin layer of dish soap before cooking, the soot washes right
off the pots during cleanup. Given the nature of the stove, I have
learned to cook one-pot meals when I'm camping, though I also bring
stuff I can eat for side dishes with little or no preparation.
Using coolers to keep food cold when camping is something that I
consider to be a waste of ice (though we do keep a five-gallon beverage
cooler in camp and put ice in it for ice-cold drinking water), so I
never bring any food which requires refrigeration. I don't bring
anything that I can't find in a grocery store, either. Once again,
this year I took more food than I ate, but it was nice to have some
variety in camp.
Breakfasts consisted of canned fruit, a couple of granola bars or
untoasted Pop-Tarts, and coffee. Other food I brought included a stick
of pepperoni, a bag of hamburger I had dehydrated at home, some
Zatarain's black beans & rice mix, some Near East couscous and stuff
mixes, some tubular pasta, a couple cans of tomato paste and envelopes
of spaghetti sauce mix for one-pot camp spaghetti, some Health Valley
instant soup mixes, a can of kippers, some crackers, some peanut
butter, some raisins, some olive oil, some Lipton noodle & sauce mixes,
and probably a couple of items I'm forgetting. Most of the mixes were
taken out of their original packaging, divided in half, and repacked
in Ziploc bags with cooking directions written on the bags, since I
can rarely eat an entire store package of that stuff.
Cooking pots consist of the ones which came with the stove and a
one-liter MSR teakettle which fits the stove top nicely and fills my
insulated coffee press. I also have the remnants of four camping
knife-fork-spoon sets, each set missing at least one utensil, a set
of measuring spoons, a measuring cup, a dishpan and dish rack, and two
folding tables on which my cooking gear and the ice-water cooler and
the everything-else water container rest when camp is set up. Food
lives in a big Rubbermaid tote next to the tables once everything is
set up. I also usually bring some plates and bowls in case I have
dinner guest(s), but most of the time I eat straight from the cooking
pot.
|