Emily Vikre - The Family Camp Cookbook: Easy, Fun, and Delicious Meals to Enjoy Outdoors

EMILY VIKRE

EASY, FUN, AND DELICIOUS MEALS TO ENJOY OUTDOORS

This is a book about family camping and about cooking, but Im going to begin it, just briefly, with the Victorians. In college I was fascinated with Victorian cautionary tales. The Victorians were creepily into writing stories that ended poorly for little Jonny and little Elinor as a way of teaching children not to do things such as climb the fence into a pasture with a bull. Now I wontbut I couldwrite a whole book of camping lessons taught through true-life cautionary tales. For instance, dont strain your pasta over the edge of a cliff lest you lose the pastaand your pot. Dont forget to bring food that you can eat without cooking, for you may find yourself unable to light a fire or your cook stove in the rain or in the dark. But also dont decide to try to camp for a week with only no-cook food; in particular, dont rely solely on an all-in-one campers bread recipe from the 70s that turns out to be denser than osmium and harder to chew. Do count how many people are in the car every time you leave a rest station, lest your brother be left behind at a gas station in Nebraska while the family makes it all the way to the next state over before noticing. Name a camping mishap, and someone in our family or friend group has lived it. When I think about family camping, these stories come to mind, and my rational side wrinkles its nose with concern and thinks, Hang on a minute! Is family camping actually a weird multigenerational hazing ritual? But, at the exact same moment, my body and heart fill with warm fuzzies and ride a wave of happy associations, golden moments, and deep love. The mishaps weave together with the good times to make a stronger, more complete warp and weft of experience. And isnt that why we take our families camping? To make memories? To spend time together in spite of it all, and even because of it all?

I grew up in a whole community of people who camp as a family, which may be why I have such an abundance of hilarious camping stories. Camping was the main vacation option and summer activity for all the families in our neighborhood. In fact, families often went on their trips with other families so that the gaggles of children could amuse one another with sticks and friendship bracelets while the grown-ups chatted. It was just what you did, and it instilled in all of us kids a sense of wonder in nature and a desire to be outdoors. Clearly the parents of my friends had some sort of superpower, because not only did they take us camping all the time, but they made it look easy. But Im going to level with you: Camping with kids is not particularly easy. However, it is wonderful and worthwhile. You just have to figure out the ropes.

My husband and I used to be quite good at camping. We kept tubs of gear in the basement (actually we still do), lined up and ready to throw in the trunk of a car to get up and go for a weekend trip when the slightest whim hit us. Camping was about spontaneity and freedom. Then we had kids and... things changed. At first it seemed like we couldnt camp at all until we realized you just have to change your expectations and parameters!

Ive found it helps to be aware of and to sort out the different types of fun. Have you heard of the types of fun? Type one fun is just, well, fun. You do things that are fun and you have fun. Type two fun is the fun you have when you push yourself with some kind of challenge. It is difficult and perhaps uncomfortable, but in the end you achieve a goal and the experience psychologically knits itself together to be perceived as fun. As an adult, Ive always been pretty into type two fun. I love a good challenge. But my kids... my kids are NOT into type two fun. Small people are type one fun people through and through (unless you count jumping off a too-high staircase as type two fun, in which case, my boys are definitely into that). So we rejiggered our outdoor escapades to be more kid friendly. Which, now that I say that, is a completely obvious thing to do. Maybe all other parents realize this stuff right away, but for us it took a while to figure it out. Spontaneity was out, planning was in. Hard-core hiking was out, hilarious games of pretending to be baby wild animals that growl, but in a friendly way, while hiking a total of one mile (2 km) were in. And in the end, we all still incidentally wound up with a decent dose of type two fun working its way in therethough the sources are different for me versus my kids.

An absolute ESSENTIAL for maintaining good levels of type one fun is good food. Something to know about me is Im a food-motivated person. People sometimes say that about their dogs when theyre training them: Shes very food-motivated, so she learned to sit and stay real fast once I was holding treats. But the same is true of me as a human. And one of the great joys of camping, whether youre into type two or type one fun, is the foodindeed its the thing that ties everything together at the end of the day like a bow on a present, regardless of how epic or micro the adventures were. And even as the type of camping weve done has changed over the years, our camping meals havent changed much at all.

Eating outside by a campfire is one of the magical aspects of camping that absolutely bonds my family together. A camping trip with good food is a good camping trip, simple as that. And the more comforting the food the better. But, theres no hard and fast rule for what makes a food comforting, or family friendly for that matter. Its deeply personal. I struggled with this a bit as I was choosing the recipes for this book, but in the end I decided to yield to this personal element and focus on sharing the recipes my family loves, giving your family the opportunity to come to love them too. The recipes range from silly simple (mac and cheese, rice cakes with peanut butter) to unexpected (dilly pasta with lamb, cornmeal pancakes with chorizo) to food you mostly prep at home and finish in camp (a big win when youre camping with kids!). For the sake of your sanity, youll probably want your camping menus to include this range too. Go ahead and lean hard on the tried and true. If, for example, instant oatmeal from a packet and hot dogs grilled over the fire make your camping life happy, then these count as good food! Begin with these basics and sprinkle in a few fun, new recipes here and there. Then again, if you and your family are feeling ambitious, plan to feast! Just remember to bring backup ramen.

RECOMMENDED COOKING METHOD

Note that the recipes in this book can be cooked one of three different ways: over a fire, on a camp stove, or in a Dutch oven. To make things easy, weve included a symbol next to each recipe that indicates the cooking method we recommend. Adaptable recipes that can be prepped using more than one cooking method include more than one symbol. And, there are some make-ahead recipes that dont involve cooking at camp. Heres a handy-dandy key to those symbols.