Month: September 2019

Vegetarian camping feast

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I love preparing the menus for our camping trips, but I was a bit stumped when I needed to devise a vegetarian menu for whole of the bank holiday without using mushrooms or any citrus or apples!!

After a bit of pondering (and internet research)… this is what I came up with:

Friday dinner

stir fry with noodles (why have I never cooked this when camping before? I bought ready prepared packets of vegetable stir fry, some stir in sauce and dried instant noodles – a super fast supper, perfect when you need to eat fast after getting all the tents up!)

pineapple pan pudding (one of my dutch oven staples)

Saturday breakfast

shakshuka (basically eggs poached by simmering them in a tomato sauce)

freshly baked damper bread

Damper bread cooked in the Dutch Oven

Saturday lunch

macaroni cheese and salad (cooked in the Dutch oven)

Saturday dinner

dahl and naan bread (dahl is a cheap, easy and tasty Dutch oven meal.  The naan toast up quickly on the fire using the Dutch oven’s lid)

blueberry cake (this was my first attempt at blueberry cake in the Dutch oven – I think it was pretty successful and I’d make it again another time)

Sunday breakfast

cabbage griddle, scones egss and beans (cooked on the Primus stove, no time for Dutch ovens before church!)

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Cabbage griddle scones

Sunday lunch

pitta breads with cheese and leftover salad (toasted up on the griddle pan on the primus stove)

Sunday dinner

sweet potato, butternut squash and bean stew with beer bread (I’d never heard of beer bread before researching for this trip, but it is a delicious, if unhealthy loaf made – as the name would suggest – with beer and drowned in butter as it cooks!)

cinnamon swirl cake (another new recipe for me, served with custard straight from the carton)

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Three dutch ovens on the go at once!! Left is the beer bread, having already cooked on the fire, it is having fire just on the top to finish it off. Middle is our vegetable stew and top is the cinnamon butter melting ready to make the pudding!

Monday breakfast

Ah well, our trip was cut short by our trip to A&E so for Monday we didn’t have what I’d planned, rather we had the emergency cornflakes I’d brought and some of the cereal bars I’d made before we came.

Hope this menu inspires you if you also need to plan a vegetarian trip.

L

Eco larder!

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When we set up camp at Freshwinds we discovered an unexpected facility – an eco larder!!

It took us a while to work out what it was and how it worked, but eventually we realised that if we put something in a carrier bag and attached a string to it, we could store things in it to keep them cool!

We only tried it out with some beer, but we can confirm that on a very hot day it did indeed cool the beer nicely.  A nice eco touch to this back to basics campsite.

R&L

 

Our latest campsite find

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You’ll have read in our last post that we had slighty too many adventures on our last camping trip!  But how did the new campsite score?

Considering our experiences earlier in the year with weather warnings for high winds, we were a little apprehensive about trying out a campsite called ‘Freshwinds’!!!  But it was recommended to us by a friend, so we thought we’d risk giving it a go!

Here’s how it compares to our other favourite campsites:  campsite scores.

L&R

Freshwinds campsite

Camp kitchen and compost toilet block

The highs and lows of camping!

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We tried out a new campsite at the Bank Holiday weekend – and I think it was fair to say it was a trip of highs and lows.

The first ‘high’ was the temperature – the hottest August Bank Holiday ever recorded.  Fortunately we had our gazebo for shade, as it really was very warm.  A bit too warm maybe… but certainly better than our experience in May of camping on the coldest May Day Bank Holiday ever!!

The first ‘low’ was also the temperature – clear blue skies meant no cloud cover and the contrast between daytime and nighttime temperatures was huge.  Sadly this meant some of our camping buddies didn’t sleep so well because they were cold.

In general, we liked our new campsite find.  We were particularly pleased that we could walk through the shady woods to the sea at Pett Levels.  We were disappointed that the pub and ice-cream stall had closed down, but the teeny tiny church on the beach had its doors open and allowed you to help yourself to tea and coffee for a donation – perfect!  Swimming & paddling in the sea was a definite highlight!

There was general consensus that the compost toilets were a low point of the trip.  Our newest camping recruit was not keen on them at all, and to be fair to her they weren’t great.  Firstly you had to climb some rickety stairs to get to them – definitely a need for another hand rail, plus the door for one of the cubicles could potentially knock someone down the stairs!  The toilets were a bit smelly – probably a combination of the end of the season, the hot weather and the fact they didn’t have urine separators on them.  The toilets themselves were probably clean enough, but sadly the cubicle areas weren’t cleaned, so they were cobwebby and dusty… it wouldn’t have taken much to make a trip to the bog a much more pleasant experience, and less daunting for our novice camper!

One of our campers was a vegetarian – which provided opportunities for a whole new avenue of recipes.  Sitting round the campfire eating freshly prepared food was another high.

On Sunday evening we sat round having eaten our fill of stew and beer bread and cinnamon swirl cake with custard discussing the highs and lows of our trip.  Our novice camper was even beginning to imply she might come again sometime.  And then disaster struck!  A simple thing, she went to adjust the fairylights on her tent (yes, we camp in style!) and tripped on a guy rope.  But sadly, it wasn’t a simple little trip and she was in agony.  Fortunately we could get the car to her and take her to A&E, where we discovered the reason for the pain – she had a spiral break in her leg.  This put the compost toilets into perspective and established a record low point for all of our camping trips.

Thank God for the NHS and A&E departments open in the middle of the night and X-ray machines and clever doctors! Distressingly we had to leave her behind in Hastings to have surgery, but 5 days later we are pleased to report she has had her op and is on her way home.

R & L