Great American Camping Cookbook
Mon Jun 11, 6:30 PM ET
Then you're also getting ready to cook at your camp site. "The Great American Camping Cookbook" by Scott Cookman (Broadway Books, $17.95) can help.
Cookman says in his introduction that most campers take too much food or too little, and often the wrong type. They assume "'instant' foods are good, 'no cook' foods are better, and that foods involving preparation are best left behind. ... They build bonfires to make bacon and eggs ... they overcook fish and boil coffee into tar."
Cookman adds: "It doesn't have to be that way."
His book offers more than 100 recipes, which he says includes many that are easy to make and many that are traditional, most featuring fresh or naturally preserved foods. He argues for taking real potatoes, not powdered, real pasta, not precooked, real cheese, not processed, and real eggs, not powdered.
"Fresh foods aren't nearly as perishable as you might think," Cookman writes. "Our forefathers routinely kept fruits, vegetables, cheeses and meats fresh - in springhouses, root cellars and smokehouses - for months."
He also offers "grub lists" for packing, including some historical lists for comparison. Ernest Hemingway's camp-out menu in the story "Big Two-Heart River" included one dinner from a can of pork and beans, a can of spaghetti and a bottle of tomato ketchup simmered together in a pan and sopped up with store-bought bread, and dinner the next night, naturally, consisting of fresh-caught trout. L.L. Bean's grub list from 1942 for two people for a week included 8 pounds of potatoes, 7 pounds of meat, 2 pounds of butter and a quart of syrup (for all those pancakes being cooked up over an open fire).
Cookman's recipes include everything from johnnycake (originally known as "journey cake" because it was a travelers' staple) to great "camp coffee" to bannock, a pancake-type bread made in a greased skillet, along with panfried fish; baked beans; and soups.
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