Why settle for less than your favorite meals when camping? Keep it SIMPLE and eat BETTER!
This is going to be a very short article - but a message that needs to be repeated CONTINUOUSLY. Camping meals do NOT need to be complicated, expensive, unhealthy or unsatisfying. I have COMPLETELY abandoned pre-packaged "camping meals"!
Please - DON'T automatically plan your camping meal menus around foil packets.
In the first place, the cost of these prepackaged meals is RIDICULOUS!
Even before rampant inflation, these camping meals were a poor value. Now it is only worse! Why would you spend $10.00 (or more) for a meal that you would NEVER choose to eat at home - or order from a restaurant or food truck?
Secondly, these camping meals are designed for shelf life - NOT for nutrition or healthy balance.
Why aren't these fast and easy meals served in schools or hospitals? Because NO dietitian would allow it! The salt content alone would be a disqualification. Furthermore, there is no way to compensate for food allergies, individual nutritional needs or tastes.
The ONLY advantage of these prepacked camping meals is the speed of preparation.
But you can duplicate the ease of preparation with dehydrated or freeze-dried foods that you prepackage at home. Not only can you assemble HIGHER QUALITY meals, you can tailor the combinations of ingredients, flavors, and the size of the portions to your taste.
BONUS - by preparing your own simple meals, you will SAVE money in the process!
Step Number 1: When planning your camping meals, the EASY and SIMPLE option is to eat what you do at HOME!
Sometimes it is fun to cook over an open fire. You might also bar-b-que more foods when camping. But for MOST meals when camping, just eat the same foods that you enjoy at home!
For example, I recently enjoyed an S24O - that is, a Sub-24 hour Overnight camping trip. I left home after after lunch, and returned in time for lunch the next day. I only needed to pack ONE breakfast and ONE supper.
What did I pack for breakfast? Am I going to eat a $10.00 foil packet of freeze-dried, reconstituted eggs? NO - for most short camping trips I SIMPLY eat the SAME thing as every other morning: CEREAL, in this case granola.
Because it is the middle of a hot summer, I have no interest in preparing hot oatmeal (often the default instant variety for camping.) In fact, I am not even going to pack a cook stove to heat water.
My only concession to "modern technology" is that I add freeze-dried milk to the granola. Then I only need to add water and my breakfast is ready. Breakfast is packaged and eaten from the plastic bowl (with the sealed lid for transport.)
DON'T Overthink Camping Meals: K.I.S.S. (Keep It Super Simple)
Sometimes, SIMPLE camping meals are the best.
If you are car camping or in a base camp and want to fry blueberry pancakes, made from scratch - go ahead. I only want to point out that we sometimes overlook the fastest, easiest, and least expensive option because we have been conditioned to place more value on the complex.
If you dread camping because of the FALSE expectation that you need elaborate meals - remember that it is OK to K.I.S.S. Super simple camping meals might be the better choice.
Side note: If you haven't tasted the difference, freeze-dried milk is far superior to old-fashioned "dried milk powder". Liquid milk contains fat - that's what makes it taste good! You CAN"T dehydrate fat, so "dried milk" is produced from fat-free, skim milk - which is why it looks and tastes like "white water". Freeze-dried milk is WHOLE milk, with only the water removed. This means it "becomes" REAL milk again simply with the addition of water!
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