Regular blog followers will already have met Henrietta who comes on every camping trip with us. She particularly enjoyed our latest trip as she got to have her own little outing and made some friends!!
Needless to say, Henrietta thought this was a wonderful camping trip! We’ll tell you what the goats made of it in the next blog post.
L & R
How else would a goat celebrate a special birthday, than with a fire?! (In a new fire pit!)
L & R
Here’s another top camping tip idea we came up with recently… pack a thermos flask to save hot water!
Nothing happens quickly on a campsite, but boiling the kettle seems to take forever! We spend a LOT of time waiting for the kettle to boil… although perhaps thats because we spend a lot of time drinking tea and coffee!?!
Once it has boiled, put any hot water you don’t use into a thermos flask. It will stay warm enough for washing up, or if you want another cuppa later, then using warm water in the kettle will save precious camping gas!!
R
Sometimes we think it would be nice to have something lighter for breakfast … but it’s generally only a thought. We pretty much always end up having a cooked breakfast when we are camping – usually a fry up.
Sometimes we pack breakfast cereal. This is a good option if some of your camping party are the type who wake up hungry and can’t wait for the fire to get going and food to cook! The downside is that you need to store the milk for it. Long life milk could be an option, but we’ve a super cool box (which is just as well as one of the goats is a bit of a milk snob and likes fresh milk!!). Even so, milk is bulky.
Porridge is a good option, especially on chilly mornings. Even better it can be made very successfully with powdered milk, which is a versatile camping staple. I use a cup of rolled oats, 2 tablespoonfuls dried milk powder, 2 cups of water and a pinch of salt, boiled up on the stove to serve 2.
And of course porridge can be jazzed up in numerous ways – adding raisins is one of our favourites, or a sprinkling brown sugar on the top. Alpen museli also makes a good sprinkle topping. Or how about a swirl of cinnamon? Or stir through berries or chocolate chips? I like that ginger you get in syrup finely chopped and stirred through, but the other goat would not approve of that!
An alternative take on porridge is to make baked oats over the fire. This is oats (2 cups), sugar (3 tbsp), milk powder (3 tbp), baking powder (1 tsp) and a pinch of salt mixed up with an egg and some water (1 1/2 cups) and baked like a cake. Add some raisins and this also works well as a tasty snack for elevensies.
Being as you’re on holiday – how about treating yourself to pancakes?
Banana pancakes work well for breakfast: mash 2 bananas then stir in 4 heaped dessertspoonfuls of self-raising flour. Next stir in an egg, 2 dessertspoonfuls of sugar and 2 of milk powder. Thin the batter using 200 ml water and then cook spoonfuls in an oiled pan, turning to brown both sides. The end result looks like little scotch pancakes and taste delicious on their own as breakfast or with a little drizzle of maple syrup to make a dessert.
And who says you need to be camping to enjoy these breakfasts – I had banana pancakes this morning!
L
Had a lovely day on Wimbledon Common yesterday at the Wimbledon BookFest… and got some very appropriate reading for our next camping trip!
L
I hope the post about fried breakfasts whetted your appetite?
A fry up isn’t the only way to do a cooked breakfast when you’re camping – here are a few more cooked breakfast options…
1) Shakshuka
This is a good vegetarian option – eggs poached in a tomato sauce with spinach or kale.
2) Omlette
This one is a mushroom omlette with tomatoes and spinach as a side. Mushroom is my favourite omlette and mushrooms also transport well for camping. I think the trick for making a good omlette is to cook it in butter. I cook whatever’s going in the omlette first and then add more butter to the pan. When the butter’s all melted I add the eggs which I’ve already beaten with a splash of water & salt and pepper.
3) Breakfast stew
We’ve been refining this over our last few camping trips. Basically it’s a fry up in a pot!! This is our best attempt so far – chipolatas, chorizo & mushrooms fried, then add baked beans, barbecue sauce and tinned cherry tomatoes, get it boiling and poach some eggs in the sauce.
Sorry if you’re now feeling hungry!
L
We celebrated the Bank Holiday weekend and the warm sunny weather… with Christmas pudding & a fire!!
Merry Christmas from two goats (and Snoopy the dog – he wasn’t so impressed with the menu!)
L & R
I’m sure someone such as your mother or grandmother probably told you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Certainly breakfast is a very important part of camping!
So here are a few breakfast ideas to inspire you.
The classic fry-up
This is our default camping breakfast. We like other things… but often you can smell the bacon from your neighbours and inevitably you feel a bit jealous. We mix and match to keep things interesting – here are some of our favourite options:
sausages – chipolatas are the best as they cook quickly and are less likely to result in the burnt on the outside, raw in the inside phenomena!
bacon – cooked until it is nice and crispy, who can resist the smell of cooking bacon?
eggs – fried or scrambled. When I make scrambled eggs, for every egg I add a knob of butter, a splash of milk and my secret ingredient a knob of cheese!
mushrooms – a favourite of mine, roughly chopped and cooked in a pan with some butter. If you are doing a vegetarian breakfast you could also add a little finely chopped onion and some handfuls of spinach.
baked beans – not my favourite, but the other goat likes them. Fortunately you can buy half sized tins for exactly this eventuality!
tomatoes – cut in half and cooked briefly on both sides to mimic grilled tomatoes
bread – either bought, or if there’s plenty of time I often make damper bread in the dutch oven over the fire.
fried potatoes – always cut them into smaller cubes than you think is necessary to be sure they cook through
potato cakes – made with leftover potato from the night before or with instant mash, mixed with butter and flour and dry fried
griddle scones – good to rustle up out of stock ingredients (self-raising flour, egg, milk) and fried, my favourite varity have shredded cabbage in them too!
orange juice – I think this is an important accompaniment as the sharpness of the juice cuts through the fatty fry up. I get the longlife fruit juice when we’re camping as it makes storage easier.
a pot of tea – I don’t do anything before tea, let alone cook breakfast in a field!
More breakfast options to follow in the next post.
L
PS don’t forget to pack the ketchup! (I often do forget, much to the other goat’s disappointment!!)
You might remember reading about how I picked wild damsons and then started making damson vodka?
Well it’s now been strained and put into little bottles.
A few more weeks to mellow and then it will be time to enjoy!
L
Well obviously we went camping… but we tried out a new site. This one is also a vineyard, so as well as buying eggs on-site, you can get wine delivered to your tent!
See how we scored it: Far Acre Farm
We enjoyed exploring this corner of Kent and we hope to go back again sometime.
R & L
