This is the 2nd video in our camping foods series. We demonstrate how to dehydrate ground beef, brown rice, a chili, various vegetables, fruits, and how to make fruit leather. Our next videos in this series will be about how to pack foods and meals for backcountry camping and specific camping meals we make.
It is a real challenge to travel with food allergies. Therefore, if traveling with kids that suffer from serious food allergies, parents need to plan ahead very carefully so as to make sure that have healthy foods for the whole family during their trip.
Here is a list of some of our favorite foods to eat while traveling on long road trips, as well as camping. We make some of the foods in advance and freeze them to be heated in our 12v car cook stove on the road. Since we cannot take the chance of eating out at restaurants, or hope that we stumble upon a health food store out on th back roads during our long road trips, this system has assisted us in getting out of the house, and miles down the road. Other great food options are now available in cans and packages at local health food stores which is very convenient.
I make all our bread from scratch, including waffles, donuts, crackers, scones, pie crusts, etc, but many of these items are available dairy free and preservative free at your local health food stores too. Here are some of our favorites:
Breakfast Breakfast that needs to be heated that is vacuum sealed can be put in aluminum pan and heated in lunchbox stove. If your child can have goat milk, then use goat milk/cheese products otherwise omit.
Snacks Healthy snacks can be served cold, with minimal effort include:
Lunch Each meal includes side salad, side fruit, side veggie, and a homemade roll:
Sides Included with each dish are any combination of the following side dishes below:
Dinner Main dish items are served with two sides, made in advanced, vacuum sealed and heated in boiling water or 12V car cook stove:
On the Road Meals These meals are pre-cooked, vacuum sealed, frozen, and ready to heat in a 12V cook stove on the road. Cook time ranges from 30 minutes, to 1 1/2 hours. Simply heat in a 12V car cook stove, camping stove, or boil in hot water, and eat with a side dish.
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.Lunch 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.
