Caravan, camping and holiday cookery

blackberry-rum

One easy way to add taste to EVERYTHING is stuffing, you know - Paxo or some other brand. Throw some in with your instant mashed potato then form into cakes and shallow fry for "hash browns", add to soup or stews to thicken and the herbs and onions add extra flavour, great in scrambled egg and it also soaks up that watery stuff that's sometimes left. Don't go camping without it!

Somerled

Having read through the whole of the thread it has brought back many memories of camping as a child both in a tent and later a caravan. In my youth the family spent three weeks in the wilds of scotland. The caravan was full of camping food as shops were a luxury. Getting bread was hit or miss. Even then it was usually 2 - 3 days old when it arrived in the local shops. The food I remember most, i.e. the luxuries were fray bentos tinned pies, oval tins of ham baked with tins of pineapple and of course the tinned stewed steak. We always refered to it as tins of PAL. Desert always seemd to be Angel Delight (Strawberry) as it was a catering pack, or custard with something. It rained a lot in Scotland.
Things never forgotten - a young lad coming round to see if we wanted any freshly caught fish. He brought a bucket of mackerel. After having it for dinner, breakfast, lunch, tea and breakfast we were fished out and there was still a lot left. But my it tasted the best ever. Pity a lot of children aren't taught how to eat fish when young - they miss out on some real delicacies. Fish fingers pale in comparison.
One of the best camping breakfasts I have found is porridge. If not the full english breakfast. In the past have nbever had a problem with cooking this on one stove. All that is need is a bit of fore thought.
What's the trick decent camping pots and pans. Boil water in your largest pan, remove and place a metal enamel plate between the pan and lid. Cook each item in turn and swiftly transfer to the metal plate. COok eggs last. The heat from the water will keep the bacon, sausage, fried bread, mushrooms, black pudding, potatoe cakes etc warm. When finished bring the pan of water upto boil to make tea/coffee or use it to washup. Done!
Although most people tend to use gas these days, I dont think that you can beat multifuel stoves that run on Unleaded petrol. One half litre of petrol lasts for a day with 4+ people or a weekend with 2. = 50p. The best is that it boils water for tea in next to no time.

The only other thing I would say is when camping with no utlities, a cheap bag of frozen peas can act as a cold fuelbar for your icebox, unless you can get the site manager/farmer to agree to recharge them for you.
When camping I wouldnt be without my £4 folding campchair ie. the ones without the arms - I've had one of the "armed ones" break on me through fatigue fracture.

Let the sun shine or not, but here is nothing like drinking hot tea in the early morning in the quiet of a country scene.

Luiz

We stay at Camping & Caravanning Club sites - http://www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk/

Hot water, washing up areas, showers, dog walks, clean and well looked after.

My husband doesn't like camping so I try and make it as pleasant as poss for him !

So we take our cafetiere and have fresh coffee every morning for breakfast. We take full advantage of local producers esp bakeries, have cereal and milk followed by toast every day and generally eat out for one meal and make the other. If it's hot one meal will be salad.

Always save excess hot water in a flask - you're wasting energy if you throw it away. It also kills the grass...

A new treat are those sachets of frothy coffee - imagine.... cappuccino or latte al fresco !

Enjoy :-)

Louise

elaine2303

Guys this all takes me right back! Being one of four girls and not from a rich famiy,we spent our holidays camping when we were young. (Although we did go about five times a year! Not bad for an ordinary working class family oF six).
I'd forotten about putting a couple of tins a week into the camping box. Dad came home with two pretty big sturdy wooden boxes one day. He screwed a couple of runners inside each, drilled two holes into the sides and bolted them together. He then slid a piece of plywood into each and hey prosto! a pair of cupboards! They were unbolted for the journey either to or from our destination and used as carrying cases, a great way to transport your tins and cooking gear as it's all together and any leaky oils or fat doesn't spoil anything else! (The newspaper lining the bottom soaked it up!)

We obviously didn't have a fridge in the conventional sense but we had an aluminium bucket with a lid on it. One of Dad's jobs upon reaching our destination was to find a safe place, usually near a hedge in the shade, and dig a hole to put the bucket in. By lifting a square of turf first then digging a hole just big enough for the bucket to sit snuglly in and deep enough to put the lid on and the turf on top of that, we had a perfectly good working fridge! I'm not sure the site owners would be too chuffed if everyone dug up their fields nowdays, even if you do put it all back when you leave but it worked for us.

Dad always went down to the harbour one morning of the holiday very early and came back with fresh fish and usually he'd sussed out where there was a stand of mushrooms growing by then as well. He'd put the fish in a bucket of salt water and go back to bed. I can still remember waking up to the smell of super-fresh fish frying and taste those breakfasts! Amazing! Wouldn't change it for a lorry full of gold! Thank you for reminding me and I'll certainly be trying the recipes out of your book as well as looking forward to more.

From a very happy 50something...............

Just one last thought. Hanging clothes becomes easy when you screw a large cup hook into the top of a broomhandle, and more at intervals down the side. (Don't put these too close and make the whole thing to heavy) If you then put a piece of soft cloth (stops it sliding) onto one of the horizontal poles of the tent and carefully hang the broomhandle from it, (when you're putting up the tent is best) you have a row of hooks to hang coathangers on! Ingenious! Just don't go mad and bring the tent down!

Greenwellies_2

Hi,

This thread has been very interesting.

There's 9 of us going away, and although I can happily cater for 5 (my family) I will struggle catering for 9 for a week on the two ring gas stove and grill.
(oh and a small gas BBQ)

So it sounds like a george forman might do the trick, I have electric in my tent, but surely the usage will trip the electrics???

Can anyone advise me on this?

I currently have an electric kettle and a small blow heater and I can't use both at the same time because it blows the fuse.

Thanks

GW

Mariel

I can't use my heater and kettle at the same time but the George seems fine, would definitely be ok if you didn't have anything else running at the same time, I don't think they use much electric. You should definitely take one, we did last time and every meal we had was cooked on it!

Bogof_Babe

I'd say your best bet would be the biggest slow cooker you can lay your hands on. The power usage is minimal and you can chuck almost anything in it. Of course you would need to be able to leave it unattended for several hours if you were going off to do things.

Greenwellies_2

Thanks for those ideas.

What about a steamer, I've avoided taking one again because of the power consumption / blowing a fuse.

Does anyone have experience of them? (I have one of them!)

Thanks

gW

willow's_mum

this thread is making me feel like a posh camper, when hubby and i go camping with the 4 children, we take our gas bbq with side burner (and hood thingy) and a two burner camping stove with grill. last year, after a day out, we called into a local shop and bought reduced chicken fillets, fresh veg, new potatoes and some frozen yorkshire puds. i cooked the meat on the bbq & veg in a 3 tier camping steamer on the side burner. when the meat was cooked, i put it on the warming grill in the hood and popped the yorkies in the bbq. we were the envy of the camp site when we sat down to a "roast", when every body else was having beans on toast. we also invested in a gas fridge, which we keep in a seperate kitchen tent with the washing up stuff. this is great, cos i means we always have milk, butter,cheese and salad without having to trail the shops.
when we went camping with some family members, they took one of them cooker/sink units out of an old trailer tent and a pressure cooker- i have to say the meals were great and we never had to resort to tins, packets or eating out at all during our weeks holiday.
we are looking forward to another camping trip in august, so it will soon be time to dust down the sleeping bags and airbeds- i can't wait.

Gingham_Ribbon

We're going to the caravan in just over a week. I don't much like the idea of buying bread. Do you think the panasonic should be okay to take with us? Now our son doesn't need a cot, pram or booster seat, there's a lot more room in our small boot.

I don't have any polystyrene because I used it all in my plant pots for drainage. Any ideas for how to transport it, or do you think it's not a good idea?