Campfire Cookin’!
Preparing for your meals on the daily is a chore in itself. Now add in summer vacations or holidays such as the 4th of July. You’re out of your normal environment away from your own kitchen with limited cooking supplies. Although this may seem overwhelming and unrealistic to stay on track with your clean eating, while out of your element, it is completely doable as long as you do the legwork to go into your vacation prepared and ready!
For Memorial Day weekend, my family goes on an annual camping trip to Idaho. When I say “camping” I mean real stinky, bear grizzly style camping. Our kitchen table is an old tree stump, showers are in the creek water from the fresh glacier, and the bathroom is the 5th tree on the left. As we were packing for the trip, we thought how great it would be to document and share the planning/ preparation process with you! Although time consuming at first, the reward will be worth it and you will be patting yourself on the back as others choke down their dry hot dogs and canned sardines!
A couple days prior to departure, we hit a major bulk food store to get the main ingredients and staples for our meals for the trip. Protein consisted of eggs, egg white carton, top sirloin, prime rib, ground turkey breast, chicken breast, turkey bacon, lean ground beef, and chicken bratwurst. For vegetables we purchased spinach, onions, bell peppers, sprouts, avocados, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. Fruits included apples, oranges, bananas, and berries. A few other helpful things that we brought along were mixed nuts, beef jerky, and egg white blueberry muffins that we make from our favorite recipe (See our Protein Muffin recipe under our “Nutrition” blog post). These provide a quick snack between meals or on a hike that are nutrient filled and a better option compared or opposed to regular/everyday camping food like chips, muffins, candy, etc. Note that all foods listed above travel well in coolers, are not going to be quick to spoil, providing many options at mealtime with much variety!
Once home with all of our goodies from our shopping trip, its prep time! We start by separating everything into zip lock containers, marinated our meat in gallon zip lock bags, and chopped up all of our fresh produce. Once these steps are completed, it makes it easy to throw into the cooler, grab and grill over the fire at mealtime. Warning, people are going to be jealous of your meals and comment on how amazingly good they look. Once again, go ahead and pat yourself on the back at this time!
Meal combinations were endless with all of our options. Here are a few examples of some of our menu items over the weekend.
Breakfast: Turkey bacon, sweet potato breakfast potatoes (cubed and ready to fry), a fried egg, with a side of fresh fruit. Lunch: Ground turkey breast mixed with bell peppers, onions, cashews and corn on the cob. Dinner: A spinach salad topped with Prime Rib, brussel sprouts, bell peppers, tomatoes and avocado. Snacks: Piece of fruit, an egg white blueberry muffin and few nuts
Now onto the “traditional” campfire festivities that take place around the nightly campfires. A lot of people would say what is camping without a cold beer in hand or a luscious, yummy, gooey Smore? We believe that you should have a reward or indulge from time to time because if you put the hard work and preparation in the rest of your meal times, a treat is deserved! The key thing here is MODERATION. Everything in moderation, including moderation. So in saying this, reward yourself with ONE smore, or one fire grilled hot dog if thats what you like to indulge in. Don’t purchase these items to bring along in your cooler. This will make it more accessible to you and easier to consume. There will be plenty of Smore supplies and dogs to go around between everyone. Same idea goes for alcohol. Be disciplined. When everyone else is feeling horrible as they drive home back to reality, you are going to feel proud and accomplished for sticking with your clean eating choices. This will also make it easy to pick up where you left off with your normal routine at home.
Key things to remember
• Preparation is key! Put the time in before hand, it will be well worth it
• Be sure to bring food along that travels well and will not spoil easily in your cooler
• Keep your meal variety interesting and ever changing. Experiment with different combinations and your new cooking appliances (aka the campfire). Make it fun!
• Bring along a few things to spice things up like hot sauce or yellow mustard. Steer clear of traditional camping sauces like mayonnaise, ketchup, ranch, etc.
• Reward yourself, just remember MODERATION!
Good luck and make it a fun experience! Try new things, think out of the box, and be proud of yourself once you have a successful clean eating weekend because it truly is an accomplishment!
Happy camping ☺
Heidi
