Lake Onslow Special we call it. It’s special because it can only be cooked and consumed at our favourite family campsite and only on the last night of a stay. Its ingredients? Everything that’s left in the chilly bin, of course.
The most mundane food becomes a culinary marvel when it’s cooked on the tailgate of your truck or under a tent fly at some remote campsite. Something about it gives the tastebuds an extra zing.
There are a few things to look out for, though, to make sure you don’t end up with a hungry and mutinous crew.
1. Prepare a menu for your trip. This is particularly important if you have children along – keeping them happy means keeping them fed. Plan meals using fresh ingredients for the first few days, moving through to food that will keep, such as packaged meals and tinned food. The easiest meals are those that use only one or two pots and can be pre-cooked in the comfort of a proper kitchen. My book has a menu and provisions list designed to feed 4 people for 3 days / 2 nights, using a chilly bin for storage.
2. Compile a provisions list to go with your menu. Tick the items off as you assemble them – if you leave this to chance you will forget something, and there won’t be a dairy or convenience store handy.
3. To cook or to make a cuppa, you will need a burner of some sort. Gas is the safest and most convenient. Good camping weather often coincides with a fire ban, so don’t assume you can cook on an open fire or charcoal barbecue. Those ubiquitous butane gas cookers in the black plastic case are good in the summer but perform poorly in the cold, as the nozzles on the gas canisters ice up. Consider buying one of the small gas burners designed for trampers and stowing it as a back-up. With a matching gas bottle, of course. And a lighter.
4. If your cooker uses gas from a refillable bottle, bleed the bottle before refilling. The more volatile gas burns first, so if you just top the bottle up, eventually you are left with a bottle near-full of the less volatile gas. In cold weather or at high altitude, this burns poorly, meaning that the water will barely boil and the food will take a long time to cook.
5. A good day’s off-roading begins with a good breakfast – lunchtime is a lot easier if a light snack is all that’s needed. It is particularly important that children start the day with something substantial – a nutritious cereal and some tinned fruit, for example. Toast makes for hassle and dirty dishes.
6. If a quick getaway is needed, the best breakfast is a nutritious muesli, with milk or juice – no cooking and little washing-up. If you are not in a rush, you can settle in for a fry-up of eggs, bacon, sausages etc. So long as everyone isn’t left waiting for someone else to finish before they can start the day’s adventures.
Happy trails! – Mark
6 tips for fuelling the crew
