Posts Tagged ‘camp cooking’

I love s’mores. But, I always find that while my MOUTH may want a second one, the sugar hits me like a truck and I just can’t handle it. And I find that while I have the perfect way to make s’mores, it’s a lot of work.

Enter: The S’more Sundae

Ingredients:

• Waffle cones (it HAS to be waffle, the bigger the better)
• Mini marshmallows
• Mini chocolate chips
• Strawberries
• Bananas

The fruit pieces weren’t nearly small enough. Make them LITTLE so they fit in the cone better!

Cut the fruit up into tiny pieces. And when I say tiny, I mean the smaller the better! I recommend putting each ingredient into its own bowl so if somebody doesn’t like something, they don’t have to eat it!

This is your chance to control and blend the flavors how YOU want it.

Layer the ingredients into a waffle cone. I recommend starting with two or three chocolate chips since nothing else fits into the tip of the waffle cone.

It could have held a bit more!

Continue layering until the cone is as full as you can get it! Then, wrap it loosely in foil. It will probably look something like a taco.

You don’t want to wrap the foil too tightly or the sundae starts to burn.

Toast for three to five minutes over low heat. You want to heat the marshmallows and fruit and lightly melt the chocolate. But the chocolate can scorch and burn so keep an eye on it! I’ve tried this over mostly-cool charcoal briquettes and on a regular propane barbeque. Both work well. Carefully open the foil packet.

We had already cooked (and eaten!) steaks so the coals weren’t very hot.

You can mix it all together with a spoon and eat or eat it in layer. I prefer it in layers. And I don’t scoop it out of the cone with a spoon but just carefully nibble the cone and sundae together.

Other suggested ingredient combinations:

• Carmel chips
• Granny smith apples
• Walnuts
• Marshmallows

• Blueberries
• Chocolate chips
• Marshmallows

• Canned mandarin oranges
• Marshmallows

You can buy chips in caramel, carob, white chocolate, and peanut butter so the possibilities are endless!

The Magic of Ziplock Bags®

This “extra” and 3 others PLUS 26 recipes are available in the eGuide: “Camp Cooking with Joanne Fitterer”

Every camping trip should include a selection of sizes of Ziplock Bags®. These great plastic inventions are great for storage, make for easy cleanup, and are always useful.

Tip #1: Dry Ingredients
Most of the time, you’ll be able to combine all your dry ingredients into a Ziplock Bag® at home, before the trip. Just measure into the bag like you would a mixing bowl, remove the air when you seal the bag and ta-da! Your dry ingredients are ready – pre-measured, pre-mixed and already contained.

Tip #2: Disposable Mixing Bowl
Ziplock Bags® make great mixing bowls because you can just drop everything in, seal the bag and mix with your hands through the plastic. When you’re done, just throw it away! This isn’t recommended for warm or hot ingredients. But, for things like pancake batter, coating potatoes in oil, or dips, it’s perfect!

Tip #3: Directional Pouring
Okay, you’ve made pancake batter and you need to get the batter onto the griddle. Pour the batter into a large Ziplock Bag®, cut off a corner and squeeze the batter through the hole onto the griddle.

You don’t need to take entire boxes of Ziplock Bags® with you- a handful of each size: sandwich, quart, and gallon should be fine. I don’t find a lot of use for the snack or 2-gallon sizes in the kitchen, so I don’t recommend them.

Readers Weigh In:

• What camp-cooking tips make your life easier?

If there’s one thing I love, it’s adding new products to the EatStayPlay.com Shop. And this week I’m not just promoting one new product but TWO!

Payson Recreation Guide

The first is Payson Recreation Guide. This guide is another of the free eGuides that focuses on outdoor recreation for an Arizona city. Payson is the “Heart of Arizona.” Visitors who arrive at this north-central Arizona town during any of the area’s four distinct seasons will find a multitude of choices for outdoor recreation from hiking, fishing, hunting, and camping to exploring wilderness areas

Payson, Arizona also offers a wide variety of trails for hiking, mountain biking or riding horses.  Plus, Payson is surrounded by THREE National Forests for endless outdoor recreation fun.

Get the Payson Recreation Guide today! Free!

Camp Cooking with Joanne Fitterer

Mrs. Fitterer is a personal friend of mine and I’ve known her for nearly 20 years. (Not sure if that makes me old or not!)

She is a retired culinary arts teacher from Chino Valley High School and we’ve teamed up to bring you an exclusive cookbook filled with great outdoor cooking recipes.

“Camp Cooking with Joanne Fitterer” has great recipes like Campfire Pepperoni Pizza, Hotdog Kabobs with Sweet and Sour Sauce, Cinnamon French Toast, Easy Cheese Drop Biscuits, and more! Sections include Breckfast, Main Meals, Side Dishes, Desserts, and 4 great Extras.

Download Camp Cooking with Joanne Fitterer today. Only $1.99.

Product Review: Bisquick Shake ‘n Pour

If you’re anything like me then pancakes are a must-have camping breakfast staple. There’s just something about sitting on a cold cement picnic table in the early morning snarffing down hot, fluffy pancakes that is just perfection.

Of course, I’ve always found the MAKING of pancakes in camp to be messy and difficult! If you’re talented in the kitchen you can always make them from scratch OR even bring a powdered mix and add the wet ingredients. The issue is then having a big enough bowl for mixing, bringing a wire whisk so the attempt is made to have the pancakes fluffy, a large spoon to scoop the batter. And then the cleanup!

And if you don’t deal with pancake batter right away… Well let’s just say that it can do a pretty good job of FIXING that cement picnic table after it dries in the bottom of the bowl!

Enter: Bisquick Shake ‘n Pour Buttermilk Pancake Mix

I had seen it in the stores but was certain that it wouldn’t live up to the reputation: light, fluffy pancakes with no mixing mess. It couldn’t be THAT good, right?

Ha! It was better!

Code Wolf & I had the 10.6 oz container which promised 12-15 4-inch pancakes. All we needed was some cold water, shake and ta-dah! (Of course, I forgot my measuring cup so I estimated with a water bottle…)

It did take some shaking and tapping to get all the batter mixed in so make sure that you have somebody really shake the jar hard. I was impressed that the lid didn’t pop off the container or have any leakage AT ALL.

Then pour a dab of batter into a hot, greased skillet and INSTANT fluffy pancakes!

There was no way that just two of us could use a whole bottle of batter in just one sitting. But the left-over batter is good for up to 3 days refrigerated. So I just popped it back into the ice chest and we had pancakes the next morning too.

And as for the 12-15 pancakes, we ended up with 17 between the two breakfasts. If I had gotten really aggressive with the bit of batter left in the bottle, I think I could have made one more.

The only thing that is a bit of a negative is the price: $2.99. I expect to pay a bit more for the convenience for when I’m cooking outside. You’d need multiple bottles to feed a larger family or a whole host of kids. But the trade-off in easy: that’s priceless!

Readers Weigh In:

• Have you tried Bisquick Shake ‘n Pour Buttermilk Pancake Mix? What was your experience?
• What type of camping convenience products do you love?

Links are to my Amazon.com affiliate account.

How To Camp-Cook With Unusual Ingredients

EatStayPlay’s popular eGuide, “Camp Cooking from the EatStayPlay.com Newsletter” is full of easy, yummy recipes you can make on your next family trip. But, when I was working on the guide, a few of the recipes called for more unusual ingredients.

So, I thought I’d better give you some advice on how to Camp-Cook With Unusual Ingredients!

So you understand the problem:

1. You’ve got a great camp recipe that calls for 1 tablespoon of teriyaki sauce
2. You weren’t planning on taking a bottle of teriyaki sauce with you on your camping trip
3. You have no idea what you can substitute for teriyaki sauce
4. You REALLY want to make this recipe

Guess what! There IS a solution!

With a little pre-planning, you should be able to make just about anything at the campsite that you would at home. All you have to do it have a nice selection of small Ziplock Bags and small plastic containers with lids.

If your recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of teriyaki sauce you can measure that into a small plastic container with a tight-fitting lid before you leave home. At the campsite, you know that you’ve got just the right amount of teriyaki sauce for your recipe and you know that if you end up not making the recipe, you can just dump out the sauce, wash the container and you’re done. You don’t have to lug your (glass!) bottle of sauce out to the campsite and back again!

Now, if your recipe calls for 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon, just measure it into a small Ziplock Bag! You will want to label the bag- especially if you’re taking more than one bag or the same ingredient for different recipes.

Funny Story:

While I was growing up, every October, we went camping with our good family friends Patti and Eddie Gray. Each trip, we made Navajo Fry Bread. Each year, Patti used a Ziplock Bag to pre-mix and pre-measure the dry ingredients. One year, we were making Indian Fry Bread and Patti told me, “Grab that bag of white stuff, it goes into the fry bread mix.”

Turns out it WASN’T fry bread mix- it was Eddie’s powdered coffee creamer!

The moral of this story: label your bags!

Readers Weigh In:

1. Have you ever had an “unexpected” ingredient in your camp food?
2. How do you transport and use “unusual” ingredients while in camp?