Camping Foods
It goes without saying that when camping it helps to minimise as much weight as possible, especially when backpacking. Unless you're an extreme survivalist you can't get away with not carrying enough food to last your trip and the reality of the situation is that food and it's associated cooking equipment is heavy and bulky.
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So what can you do to minimize the weight of all this essential equipment? When a lot of people think about camping foods they think about dry foods that have no taste. Believe it or not you don't have to rely on frozen or dried meals that taste like the cardboard and plastic they are packaged in. You do have a lot of healthier tastier options.
Camping and hiking can require a lot of energy from walking and traversing the bushland. It's essential that anything carried in must be light or have a weight that you can tolerate.
For most campers cooking involves using micro stoves or burners. Primarily this is a very simple burner that is used mostly for boiling water. Usually the food that is cooked is the dehydrated kind and is simply placed into the boiling water.
Oatmeal is one of the healthiest, easiest to
prepare and light to carry form of camping
foods a camper could hope for. It's packed full of
energy and fibre and tastes great with a little bit of
honey and some powdered milk with hot water. There's
nothing like a hot bowl of oatmeal for an early morning
start cooked on the campfire or camp stove. There are
other cereals out there but oatmeal is my favorite. To
save yourself from taking a whole box on your next trip
portion out what you need into ziploc plastic bags, one
for each meal.
Dried fruits are great camping foods and pound for pound are a much better option than lugging fresh fruit to the campsite which is more than likely going to get squashed and end up making a big mess. Not to mention the flies that it will attract.
Powdered drinks like tang and powdered milk are also great weight and space savers. All you need to add is water. Instant coffee rather than brewing coffe also helps to save on space and equipment needed.
One of the overlooked benefits of taking these types of food to the campsite is that you also have less trash to carry out or dispose of.
Make sure you pack a variety of different meals and foods so you don't get bogged down in the monotony of eating the same thing at every meal. Chocalate is great moral booster so take some along. Nothing beats a bar of chocalate after a hard slog through the forest. Cookies are also light and easily packed and a great energy boost for between meals.
In summing up camping food should be fun and easily prepared. Work out how long you are going out camping for and prepare your meals in advance. A great way is to put all the ingredients of each meal into some alfoil and chuck it in the esky. Then all you need is to take it out and cook it over the coals. You don't even have a cooking pot to clean up with that idea.