bearing blog

A weekend camping menu.

Planning for the summer's camping trips and other outings has begun.  I'm expecting to go tent-camping with our friends' families at least once or twice this summer, and the other day I called Hannah up to confirm our standard camping menu plan.

One summer the three families managed to go camping five times, and that was the summer that we streamlined the weekend camping menu to perfection (at least for our families).

Here are some things to consider when you set up a multi-family campout meal plan.

(1) Go allergen-free.   If anyone in your camping party has a food allergy or intolerance, don't bring that stuff along if you can help it.  It's not too bad if the allergic person is an adult or a very watchful older child, and if the allergen is confined to a single easy-to-isolate item; but in general, camp food gets strewn all over the place, and it's very hard to keep things separate.  In our case, one of our adult friends has celiac sprue and must avoid wheat; so all our cooked meals and snacks are gluten-free.  (We have made an exception for graham crackers for s'mores, which we think we can control pretty well.)

(2) No fruit with sticky remains.  Apple cores attract bees and black flies, which are no fun.  If you pack any fresh fruit, stick with things like grapes or maybe clementines, which leave inoffensive, dry little peels.   

(3)  Consider a cooler-free, and therefore a fresh-meat-free, trip.  I know, I know, half the fun of cooking out is hot dogs roasted on a stick over the campfire, bacon in the morning, and maybe steaks or burgers.  But hear me out.  The cooler and ice necessary to keep all this stuff from poisoning you is HEAVY.  And it's remarkably hard to practice food safety rules when there's only one food prep surface, a wood picnic table, and all your water  bottles are clustered together on it.    This doesn't mean you have to go meatless (although that can work really well).  Shelf-stable meat products work fine:  aseptically packaged, dehydrated, smoked, or canned meats do fine.  Uncracked eggs are okay overnight if you're going to cook them through.    Depending on how they are packaged, hard cheeses will be fine all weekend.  And many fresh vegetables will get no worse than a little wilty.

(4) Don't rely on a cooking fire the first evening.  You have enough to do -- fight Friday rush hour traffic, put up the tents, set boundaries for the children -- before you even get the fire started.  Don't keep your kids hungry while you do all this.  Pack a picnic basket.   Use the cooking fire to make snacks later on.

(4 and a half).  Bring charcoal.  Wood is nice, but finicky.  If it turns out you don't need it, just take the charcoal back home.

(5) Simplify when dividing up "what to bring."  You can settle up any disparities in cost later.  It's so much easier to remember "My family is in charge of breakfast" than "My family is in charge of the green peppers for Saturday morning breakfast, the canned broth for dinner, and the raisins for the trail mix."

(6) Consider cooking two meals, not three, on your full day in the woods.  You're all going to be nibbling trail mix and jerky anyway.  Why not just call it lunch?  It'll give you more time for hiking and fishing and stuff.

(7) For multifamily trips, try "stone soup" to minimize planning.  Have each family bring an assortment of odds and ends to make part of a stew -- a few vegetables, potatoes, bits of smoked or dehydrated meats, dried beans or grains, some spices or herbs, canned broth, etc.  (Don't overdo it!  One cup of solids per person is more than enough).  Then put it together and see what you get.   For three families, we always make two different pots of stew:  one on the bland and simple side, and one on the spicy and interesting side.  Part of the fun is deciding which ingredients go into which pot.  (We have been known to throw the leftover beef jerky into the soup.)  We put them into two dutch ovens right after breakfast and let them cook on the coals all day while we hike.  Have some packaged bread or tortillas or chips on the side, and you've got a satisfying and very trouble-free meal.

(8)  Simplify with "brunch porridge" on the morning before you leave.  Mix it all up and set it to cook on the coals while you squeeze in one last morning hike, then come back and eat it up before taking down your camp.  (We have been known to throw the leftover trail mix -- M&Ms and all -- into the oatmeal.)  Aseptically packaged or canned milk is nice to have for this purpose, but powdered milk will do if you want to save weight.  

(9) If you camp a lot with the same people, have a "standing menu."  It's a plan.  You can change it if you want to do something different, but you can also get going much more quickly and spontaneously if you've got a standing default plan.

Here is this summer's standing weekend non-backpacking camping menu for three families:  six adults and eleven children.  

Friday Dinner:  Each family brings their own "brown-bag" dinner that requires no cooking.

Friday Campfire Snack:  S'mores.

Saturday Breakfast:  Scrambled eggs with sauteed peppers and onions, salsa, and corn tortillas.

Saturday on the Trail:  Trail mix and jerky.

Saturday Dinner:  Stone soup.

Saturday Campfire Snack:  Popcorn.

Sunday Brunch:  Oatmeal with brown sugar, cinnamon, and dried fruit, made with canned evaporated milk.

Beverages:  Tang, tea, coffee, powdered hot apple cider.

Each family is responsible for bringing these things:

• Their own brown-bag dinner for Friday
• Enough eggs to feed their family for one breakfast
• 4-6 cups worth of solid ingredients for stone soup
• Cooking oil, salt, and dish soap

Plus:

• Family #1 brings trail mix/trail snacks for everyone, plus herbal tea
• Family #2 brings campfire snacks for everyone, plus black tea and powdered cider
• Family #3 brings breakfast tortillas/veg and oatmeal/mix-ins, plus coffee and Tang

Sequelae.

I live far, far away from the Gulf of Mexico.  I have never walked its beaches and have not seen its waters (unless you want to count a single airplane flight into New Orleans for an American Chemical Society conference some years ago).

The kind of natural getaway that's within a day's drive of my family is the north woods of Minnesota.  Also beautiful and fun for the family, but not much like a beach.

So I appreciated this:   a brief, wistful description of the immediate effects from the BP oil disaster, on a family with kids, much like mine.

Noticed this at the bottom and thought it was worth repeating:

We plan on still supporting our beach towns by returning here throughout the year. Although we may not have been able to prevent the ecological destruction caused by BP, we can prevent the economical fallout and keep our beach towns alive. If you live nearby, I encourage you to do the same.

Muir of the Mountains: A review.

One of the things I really love about literature-based history in elementary school is that you get to decide the criteria of who's "important" enough to spend lots of time on.    In elementary school, you can, if you wish, pick historical characters based on interestingness, or, well, character.   Even if some of the folks you pick would be relegated to a little side box in a typical American history textbook for elementary school kids.

We just finished reading a biography of John Muir:  Muir of the Mountains by William O. Douglas.  We spent four precious sessions of American history on it.  And I am so glad we did!  

First of all, the kids all loved the book and listened with rapt attention.   Really good biographies are wonderful ways of getting at history, I suppose because they are at bottom stories.  The more interesting the character, the more interesting the book, of course, and Muir was definitely an interesting character.  "He's crazy," all the kids agreed as I got to the part where Muir was leaping across crevasses during a morning walk with his dog Stickeen.  "Definitely crazy," they added when I got to the part where he had to lie in hot-spring-warmed mud all night to keep from freezing in a mountain snowstorm.  But they didn't think he was crazy when I read about his efforts to protect the redwood trees from extinction, or his elaborate descriptions of the Yosemite valley.  (This particular book includes lengthy passages of Muir's own writings -- poetic, detailed, multisensory.  All the better.)

Second, the book gave us a window into how much people's attitudes towards nature have changed just in the last hundred years or so.  We were able to discuss how much they take it for granted, the idea that parkland should be set aside for people to enjoy it in a state close to its natural state; the idea that future generations deserve to enjoy the resources that our generation has now.  It really helps put into perspective the modern environmentalist movement.   The proper end of nature conservation is to make life better for human beings -- a point Muir stressed over and over in his writings, and one that comes through in this particular biography quite clearly.

Third, the book pointed out something to love about the United States of America (Canada too) -- unlike in many other places in the world, our country stepped in to protect huge areas of the wilderness before it got destroyed, and we still enjoy that today.  America's national parks are a treasure we should never take for granted.  The book taught the kids that it might have gone differently -- the giant redwoods might have been logged into extinction, for example, or the parks and forests might never have been created for us to enjoy as hikers, campers, bird watchers.  Someone had to care about the land and the species that inhabit it, and someone had to lobby the government to get the necessary laws passed.   Seriously:  Our national parks are a big reason why I'm glad to live in the USA and call it my country.

Fourth, the background information about Muir's life, like many biographies, reinforced a lot of other concepts in American history that could have been taught from a textbook -- so we don't have to.   We got to discuss immigration, economics,  political lobbying, among other things.  Several U. S. presidents make cameo appearances in the book -- most notably, Teddy Roosevelt, who went camping with Muir, and Woodrow Wilson (boo hiss) who undid some of Muir's work.  

Fifth, it gave us another opportunity to talk about the tensions between different interest groups and to point out the way they interact non-simplistically.  For example, why encouraging more people to participate in hunting and fishing can help state DNRs protect the same species that are hunted and fished as well as other species.  

Sixth, the book contains a considerable amount of scientific information about glaciers, rocks, and the animal and plant species that interested Muir.  

Seventh, it gave us a chance to talk about Muir's admirable character traits.  Not just his love of the outdoors and his eye for beauty, his persistence and his charisma that helped him get laws passed that would protect his beloved Sierra Nevadas, although these alone would be  The biographer made a point of telling how after Muir married, he deferred his dream of full-time naturalist/environmentalist work for about ten years while he worked on a farm, carefully saving money until he had ensured that his wife and daughters were provided for.  Not till then did the family sell off the farm and Muir devote himself year-long to his beloved mountains.

Finally:  this is history that my kids can relate to.  Mark and I try hard to pass down our love for outdoor activity, for the outdoors in general, to our kids.  It's really one of our family values.  I'm glad to be able  to place something so important to our family in its historical context.

After we finished the book, we unrolled the U. S. map and spent quite some time looking over it and marveling at the national parks and forests and wilderness preserves shown all over the country.   The kids all want to see Yosemite for themselves, and wished the only Minnesota national park (Voyageurs -- it's up in the north woods) were close enough to make a day trip.  Well, we are heading out to Rocky Mountain National Park this summer at least, and I expect the trip will be made more meaningful with a little bit of background knowledge about the man who more than anyone else made it and all the other national parks possible.