camp kitchen

Hello from a field

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Camping season has begun!!We are currently enjoying coffee & cake by a fire to take off the chill in the air.

The we managed to get the tent up before the rain, and it stopped to enable us to go for a walk & cook dinner on the fire last night. However everything is muddy! Good job we packed our wellies!!

It wasn’t too cold overnight…especially if you have double thermals on, carpets & down sleeping bags.

Last time we camped at Pit Hill we brought the spaceship & camped light using Betty’s boot as our kitchen. This time we brought Alice & camped in style!

More about who Alice is another time…

R & L

Happy Pancake Day!

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I’ve made lots of things in a field…but oddly not normal pancakes. Banana pancakes, yes…but not the normal sort you have on pancake day.

I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’m not currently standing in a field in the dark cooking tonight’s treats…I’m not even in the garden, but I did take the opportunity to practise the quantities ready for my next outdoor culinary opportunity!

Camping Pancakes (serves 2)

Mix together:

2 dessertspoonfuls dried milk powder

4 heaped dessertspoonfuls plain flour

1 egg

2 cups water

Heat oil in a frying pan. Pour in some batter. When one side is golden brown flip & cook the other.

Serve with white sugar & lemon juice (from a bottle) or syrup or chocolate spread…or whatever you have to hand in your camp kitchen.

Remember you always need more oil & a hotter pan than you think you do!!

My batter was lumpy, but this made nice thick pancakes so I couldn’t tell once they were cooked!

Enjoy!

L

Tuna pasta

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Even when I’m not camping I often use my camping recipes as they are super reliable – if you can cook it in a field, it ought to turn out ok in a domestic kitchen!

I also like to practise recipes that I think might make good additions to my caming recipe book. This week I discovered this very simple meal:

Tuna Pasta (serves 3)

3 cups pasta

1 tin mushroom soup (400g)

1 tin tuna (145g)

1 tin sweetcorn (200g)

Put pasta in pan with soup. Refill soup tin with water and also add this to pan.

Boil until pasta soft.

Stir in drained tuna and drained sweetcorn and warm through.

Super simple! This was the first time I’d tried it. Another time I might experiment with adding a tin of sliced mushrooms too as it might add a nice variety of textures.

If you’d like to read about our camping food suggestions, check out this section of the website Campsite Cooking.

L

Betty’s kitchen

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Firstly, who is Betty?! She is my Skoda Yeti – and I love her because she is reliable and she has a decent sized boot. You can also take the back seats out, which is very handy to squeeze in lots of camping stuff!! But on our last trip she really excelled herself… and doubled as our kitchen!

An 84 litre ‘really useful’ box with some drawers from Ikea sitting inside formed our kitchen unit. I put a little peice of wood under the box to make sure that the drawers opened easily over the lip of the boot.

The top drawer had plates, bowls, mugs, goblets, kitchenfoil, the teapot and a collapsible kettle. I also stowed a hanging toiletry bag in there which I repurposed as an organiser for our cutlery and washing-up supplies. On arrival it hung from the Betty’s boot struts.

The bottom drawer was our food store. The square storage boxes you get from Lakeland fitted perfectly. We didn’t get round to labelling them, but the coloured lids allowed for a bit of colour-coding! Jars of spices etc also fitted nicely in there.

On top of the drawers I stowed my collapsible washing-up bowls – one for washing up (black) and one for our handwash station (grey). Our chopping boards also fitted there – we have a set of thin colour-coded ones from Robert Dyas, which we are very pleased with, plus a bamboo bread board. Down the side of the drawers, I stowed cleaning spray, salt & pepper pots and Henrietta, but at the campsite these things were in use and we used this space to store tins of food. (Spot the nice perch Henrietta found in the pictures above!)

Next to the ‘really useful’ box I put my outwell storage caddy with our pots & pans and other utensils.

It was very pleasing to set up the ‘demonstration’ table (we call it that because it’s height makes it look like you are giving a cooking demonstation to those sitting round the campfire!) at right angles to Betty. At it’s highest height the demonstration table (from lifetime) was tall enough to fit the big cool box (from iceytech) underneath and still be able to open the cool box.

Our stove (primus) sat on the table and meant we had a very practical cooking space. We had thought that the open boot would give a bit of shelter from the elements, but we didn’t get the opportunity to test that out as happily we were camping in a heatwave!

R

The glint of a teardrop!

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In our last post we mentioned seeing the glint of the tops of campervans at Pit Hill Farm and going to explore. Not only did we find campsite but a friendly farmer who invited us to come and try out the site sometime.

We also found a friendly camper and proud owner of a beautiful new teardrop camper. I’d never seen anything quite like it, so I had to take some photos for you.

So compact and yet everything you need! And stylish with it.

We everso nearly went camping at Pit Hill recently, but a bout of COVID put a rain check on the plans. Hopefully we’ll try it out soon and of course we’ll let you know how we get on.

L

More cakes from a tin

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As well as using up out-of-date tins on our camping trips, I’ve been taking my out-of-date ‘rewards’ for helping at the food bank home each week and turning them into a snack for the food bank volunteers coffee break the following week.

I’ve made a Christmas-cake style fruit cake with out-of-date tinned pineapple, hungarian peach cake, low-fat brownies with out-of-date prunes, chocolate crispy cakes with out-of-date strawberry flavoured rice crispies! None of which would be particularly suited to cooking on a campsite.

One week however I was rewarded with a tin of out-of-date raspberries and I made one of my favourite fire recipes for them & made them guess the mystery ingredient! It was a raspberry & thyme cake.

This particular one was baked in my oven at home, but it works well on the fire. I invented the recipe myself, so I can share it with you here:

Raspberry & Thyme Cake

Mix together:

2 1/2 cups self-raising flour

1/3 cup dried milk powder

pinch of salt

Stir in:

Juice from a 300g tin of raspberries

1 egg

1/2 teaspoonful dried thyme

Gentle stir the raspberries through the batter.

Put into a lined, greased 1 lb loaf tin.

sprinkle the top with 1-2 tablespoonfuls of chopped mixed nuts.

Cook for about 40 mins or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. (If using a domestic oven, go for something like 170C. If you are using a dutch oven, use a trivet to raise the tin off the bottom of the oven, have fire just licking the bottom and have as much fire as you can on top of the oven.)

If you try it out, let me know how you get on!

And if you donate to your local foodbank, please make sure your donation is well in date, so it can help a hungry person!!

L

Anticipating tasty camping trips ahead

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I got a new cookery book for Christmas – and I’m hopeful it will provide inspiration for some good camping meals!

Long-life ingredients are ideal for camping when you have limited space in your cool box. I’ve already adapted some recipes from Jack’s earlier book (A girl called Jack) for previous trips. So I’m hopeful of some new inspiration for 2022’s camping trips!

As you can see, I purchased some tins to start trying it out straight away!! The first recipe I tried was tasty, but not ideal for campfire cooking as it was a pie!

L

Top camping tip #2

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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

The most important meal of the day! #2

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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

Our knight in shining armour?

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Ok well sadly not.  We would be very happy if a knight in shining armour did turn up to help out with the washing up, but for now we’ll just have to make do with a piece of his chainmail!

Yes, that’s right, the latest addition to our campsite washing up system is a scourer made of chainmail.

chainmail scourer

Chainmail scourers are ideal for cleaning dirty dutch ovens.  They scrape, but don’t scratch and the food residue is easily cleaned out of the chain mail cloth.

They are easily available online ( for example here ).

We are very pleased with ours.  It has been well used over the last month or so we’ve had it.  The dutch ovens are now all washed and seasoned and tucked away in the shed… although we’re hopeful there might be more fire food yet, even if camping might be over for the season.

L & R