When I mention campsite cooking, I get the same response from almost everybody:

“When I’m on vacation, I don’t want to cook!”

So don’t cook while you’re on vacation, cook ahead of time, like I did, and let your husband do the grilling and reheating! Honestly, our biggest worry was keeping ice in the coolers, the meal-fixing was a cinch.

And look at it this way, if you’re camping, and eating food you would have eaten at home anyway, you’re only out finances-wise for gas and any sightseeing expenditures you decide to splurge on.

Here are a few things I did that would be classified under mega-cooking, in the weeks before our trip:

• Every time I browned hamburger I put aside some in a container in the freezer. By the time we left I had enough browned meat to use for the biscuits and hamburger gravy.
• The campsite manager warned us ahead of time that South Dakota nights are cold, so I decided to make chili and beef stew–something to stick to our ribs. I just doubled these meals ahead of time, and stuck the extra portions in the freezer. They reheated great in a cast iron skillet over the campfire.
• In the same way I baked extra cornbread, muffins and biscuits to accompany our meals. I froze the muffins because I made them 2 weeks prior to our trip. The unfrozen cornbread and biscuits reheated in foil on the grill were as good as fresh from the oven!
• Take some mixes along…I bought a McCormick’s homestyle white gravy mix that only needed water added. I also took a box of pancake mix that only required water to mix up.

I took some frozen yellow cake, planning to serve it with blackberries and whipped cream. Unfortunately, the gallon-sized bag I had the cake stored in was punctured and let melted ice in…ruined the cake. But we enjoyed the sugared blackberries over crumbled blueberry muffins.

My mom gave me a bagful of clean peanut butter jars…these were perfect for transporting eggs. I cracked them into the jars ahead of time and just stuck them in the cooler. Mix and pour for scrambled eggs to eat plain, or mixed with foil-cooked potatoes, or in breakfast tacos. Then toss the jar!

I also packed canned peaches, grapes, applesauce, raisins/craisins/dried blueberries and way more snack items than we were able to consume. (You just never know with my dh, the self-proclaimed snack king) and took dry cereal along as a breakfast back up.

We had milk that needed used up by its expiration date, so I filled two peanut butter jars up and took them instead of the powdered milk I’d planned on taking. Worked great!

Of course, you’ve got to take along hot dogs and ground meat for hamburgers and my girls’ favorite: MARSHMALLOWS to roast…

We ate well, and had food leftover. And by lining the pans with foil before cooking, I saved myself a lot of clean-up.

Have I convinced you yet? 🙂