How To Make Homemade Camp Food
Forgo the freeze-dried fare this summer — here are three tips/recipes for eating home cooked or naturally-foraged food on your next camping trip:
Dry Biscuit Mix
Outdoors chef Linda Gabris offers this tasty camp-food recipe:
These biscuits can be fried in a greased pan or cooked as “stick bread” (rolled into strips, wound around a seasoned stick and roasted over coals), an ideal food for backcountry travellers who like to go lightweight.
10 cups flour (white or whole-wheat)
2 cups instant milk powder
½ cup baking powder
½ tablespoon salt
2 cups vegetable shortening
Mix the first four ingredients in bowl. Cut in the shortening with a pastry cutter until finely crumbed (or process in food processor). Package in zip-lock bags. Once at camp, add enough water to two cups of mix to make pliable dough that can be formed into four biscuits. Fry or roast; enjoy.
Morning Mix
Outdoors chef Linda Gabris offers this tasty camp-food recipe:
Mix eight cups oats, three cups shredded coconut and three cups mixed nuts (walnuts, almonds, peanuts). Blend two cups vegetable oil with two cups honey, drizzle over mixture. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Spread on baking sheets, toast in a 350°F oven until the oat clusters are golden. Cool, then add dried fruits of choice (raisins, bananas, cranberries); pre-package and take to camp. Serve hot or cold.
Forage Foodstuffs
According to Linda Gabris, outdoors chef, foraging expert and author of Cooking Wild, foraging seasonal picks from Mother Nature’s bountiful pantry is a healthy way to supplement your diet while in camp. Dandelion, broad-leaf plantain and fireweed are a few common leaves well suited for the salad bowl. Stinging nettles, available from spring to frost, make a delicious potherb. Ripe rosehips of autumn are loaded with vitamin C and can be steeped into nutritious tea or seeded, cooked and sweetened into delicious sauce to eat with biscuits or pour over wild strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. In fall, wild hazelnuts (pictured) can be brought into camp for a memorable after-supper treat.
