Camp Food

Someone should write a book on the relationship between food and camping. I think many families are like ours, with deep-seeded traditions linked to their camping experience. For example, I always buy Tostido's cheese dip for camping trips. It's expected. If we showed up at the camp site and my husband found out that there was no cheese dip, we might have to turn around and go home.

A long standing tradition in our family is that of pudgy pies and camping. Other people call them less-attractive names like sandwiches made with pie irons, but for us they will always be pudgy pies.


Our favorites are pizza pudgy pies. In fact, we rarely do any other style. Even the Wonder Bread tastes good when it's cooked in an iron over a camp fire. Add a little pizza sauce, cheese, pepperoni and olives, and you have a little bit of heaven at your camp site.

We also do hobo dinners, which I think encompasses any food folded up in aluminum foil and cooked over an open fire. On our last camping trip, I cooked them in the camper's oven because no one wanted to build the fire (which I realize is a sign of my generation's laziness and a "hallelujah" to my previous comments about camping today). Still, they were the best I've ever made. Hmmm. A new tradition?


Of course, like all other Americans, we toast marshmallows over an open fire. The new twist is this (and if you haven't tried it, you HAVE to, because, well, wowee): coconut-covered marshmallows. You can find them with the regular marshmallows in the baking isle. They don't puff up like regular marshmallows when you put them over the flames. Instead, they seem to carmelize on the outside, creating a crusty, coconutty shell with sugar inside. Divine.


Enough for now. I need to go eat.