Camp Cooking: Meal Making

In September, we will celebrate 10 years of camping with children.  We've made a variety of changes in our plans and equipment over the years.  Meals have had to change as time has gone on as well.  Three things have driven our meal choices:

1. Must be able to serve MANY eaters of ALL skill levels.  When we started, we had seven children ranging from 8 years to 8 months.  In June of this year it was fifteen of us from adults & teens to 2 yrs old.  That's a lot of different skill levels.
2. Must be CHEAP!  Camping can make vacationing less expensive for a family our size.  I want to keep it that way.
3. Must be EASY! When camping, so many things are unpredictable.  Add children to the mix and... well.  It doesn't get more predictable.  Making meals should be simple without any hassle at any step of the process.

I'm going to drag out my menu from last post and show you how I put these three are put into practice at our campsite.

Day 1: AM

Breakfast Blobs (use 5# sausage)

sliced peppers

Really called Sausage Cheese Biscuits, these little wonders have made

a great "departure day" meal for several years now.  They are warm, filling, and

full of carbs AND protein AND fat.  Managed by toddlers to adults with a

bunch of last minute jobs on the run, they are my goto for Day 1.  I serve

with something fresh and easy with natural moisture and crunch.  This time

it was peppers I had sliced the night before.

Day 1: Road Meal

Kettle Korn

sliced peppers

apples

I bagged up the extra peppers from breakfast.  
Kettle Korn is easy-peasy if you have a stovetop popper like mine.  I use1/4 cup popcorn kernels, <1/4 cup sugar and ~1 TB oil. Pop, cool and bag for the road.  DONE.  To serve, I use #4 Cone Coffee Filters.  They pack flat, are easy to fill with dry 
finger-foods, cheap and disposable. 
I also drug out some bags of apples and we were

all set when we pulled into a rest area on the way north.  We polished off 3/4 gallon

peppers, 2 1/2 gallons of Kettle Korn, and 5# of apples here.  **The order of serving 

is significant here.  Eat the raw veggies first, kids. If you are hungry, you will eat 

them.  if you aren't hungry enough to eat them, you don't 

need Kettle Korn either.

Day 1: Evening Meal

last of the peppers

2# raw carrots

Beans & Burger

2 bags Twizzlers

This is an easy to eat, feel-good meal that I heat in my large stockpot on

our two-burner LP stove.  All ingredients are pre-cooked. Serve in mugs

 with shredded cheese (1.5lb) and eat with Sporks.

4# burger, browned & frozen for transport

1 qt bag of fried onions, frozen for transport

four 28oz cans baked beans

two 28 oz cans pork-n-beans

one XL can pinto beans, drained

2 cans kidney beans, drained

3 cans black beans, drained

3 cans butter beans, drained

Day 2: AM

leftover Breakfast Blobs

hot chocolate

bananas

We had over 50 biscuits left on our departure day.  I plan it that way and

pack the extras for this first breakfast.  Fresh bananas are an easy
 food for everyone here.  Hot chocolate is a powder that we 
add to heated water:
11 cups dry milk powder
~16 oz chocolate milk mix
1/2 cup baking cocoa
(I add the cocoa to make it darker flavored.  The original recipe
I had also had non-dairy creamer & powdered sugar in it but I'm cheap.)
I use about 1/4 cup for evey cup of hot water.  About.

Day 2: Snack

apples

Abbi Bars

Abbi Bars are a home made version of Lara Bars.  Gluten Free &  Casein Free,

these little gems are a power house of flavor and energy in a package that

adults and toddlers can both eat and enjoy.  Find the recipe in my next

post and the variations are many.  They deserve their own post.  We ate 24 bars

and 8# of apples for this snack time.

Day 2: Evening Meal

celery

spaghetti

Oreos

Once I get someone handing out fresh celery to the circling vultures, I get some

 water boiling for pasta.  But it's not just regular pasta cooking that I do at camp.  I 
cook my pasta at home and dehydrate it so I can quickly rehydrate it instead of boiling
 and draining.(I have never found a way to do that trick without almost scalding
 my toes.) I used 5# small shells this time.  Orzo works great but costs more.

  I choose a variety that will fit easily on our Sporks and will work well for small mouths.  I heat a scant gallon of water to boiling and add the pasta to the pot.  Once it's ready, the rest goes in. For this meal, we used 3# Italian sausage with 

onions & zucchini, fried and frozen. To this we added 7 cans Hunt's spaghetti sauce (because it comes in a metal cant that won't break in transport).  We like to serve with parmesan cheese and, for camp, we don't hold back 

much.  We use a full pound of that.

Day 3: AM

GORP

bananas

cappuccino

Good Old Raisins and Peanuts (GORP) is an easy one for us now that all of us

can chew nuts.  Sometimes I add M&M's if I'm feeling generous.  Bananas

are still fresh and cappuccino is considered a treat (and a convenient

 warm beverage.)

Day 3: Snack

dry fruit

cheese sticks

We dehydrate fruit for our trips and general snacks.  Here I served a couple

gallons of dry apples in coffee filters and 24 string cheese sticks.

Day 3: Evening Meal

carrots

mexican

Twizzlers

This is a favorite meal for my troops (except maybe the carrots). My

apologies for calling it "mexican" when it is so clearly an upper-midwest hotdish

sort of meal.  It is what it is and I needed a name for it.

I start by reconstituting cooked, dehydrated brown rice.  This trip I used two boxes

from Aldi.  I'm not super close on measuring at camp because the meals are

planned to have moisture.  Rice that ends up a little wet is not a problem.

Once that's done, I just start dumping in ingredients:

4# ground meat (We have our own Chorizo!) Frozen for transport.

2-3  onions, chopped and fried. Frozen for transport.

2 cans whole kernal corn, drained

2 cans hominy, drained

3 cans black beans, drained

5   24 oz jars salsa

Heat through and serve over tortilla chips (we use 3 bags) with shredded

cheese (1.5lbs) and sour cream (4 pounds).

Day 4: AM

almonds

dry apricots

hot chocolate

Just as easy as it sounds.  This is NOT a great meal for tots that don't chew

nuts, but mine are nut grinders, so we're good.

Day 4: Snack

GORP

dry bananas

From here, it's pretty much repeats and leftovers.  We're camping.  It's exciting

every moment of the day!  Live with repeated meals.  It's ok.

Day 4: Evening Meal

carrots

spaghetti

Oreos

Day 5: AM

leftovers

(no hot beverage)

On the last morning, we're all packing the last of our goods and getting ready

to hit the road.  I want the last of the fresh fruit & veggies gone by now.  The last

of whatever snack I have?  Pass it out and get it all eaten.  We all don't

eat the same things but we all get fed.  

Day 5: Snack

Brown Sugar Shortbreads

leftovers

We usually drive straight home w/o stops to run around very much.  We're tired.

The kids are tired.  We just wanna eat when we are hungry and put the miles

behind us.  It's a time for debriefing and resting.  Eating is an afterthought.

Camp Cooking: The Plan

We camp.

And we eat.

That requires a bit of planning, some gear, and a whole lot of food.

For many people that would mean lots of hot dogs & s'mores, eggs in a cast iron skillet over the campfire, and those little pies you make over the campfire embers.

Like you would expect by now, we do things a little differently with camping foods, too.  I've had to feed fifteen people in a wide variety of weather conditions, activity levels, and self-feeding levels.  Hot dogs won't make the cut.

We just returned from a four-night stay at one of our favorite MN State Parks.  This time we camping in the normal campsites at Gooseberry Falls.  (We have spent a lot of time at group camp sites in the past but that topic needs its own post.)  Four nights for us means:

• one Departure From Home Meal
• two Road meals
• four Evening Meals
• four Morning Campside Meals
• four to six Snacks

My first step in this task (ok.  Any task.  I like a good list.) is to make a good list!  And, I've done this gig enough times now that I simply refer to my "CAMPING" file folder and refer to last trip's lists to begin with. Here's the list from last time: 

Day 1: AM

Breakfast Blobs (use 5# sausage) 

Sliced peppers

Day 1: Road Meal

Kettle Korn

Sliced peppers

apples 

Day 1: Evening Meal

Beans & Burger

Day 2: AM

leftover Blobs

bananas

hot chocolate

Day 2: Snack

apples

Abbi Bars

Day 2: Evening Meal

celery

spaghetti

Oreos

Day 3: AM

GORP

bananas

cappuccino

Day 3: Snack

dry fruit

cheese sticks

Day 3: Evening Meal

carrots

mexican

Twizzlers

Day 4: AM

almonds

dry apricots

hot chocolate

Day 4: Snack

GORP

dry bananas

Day 4: Evening Meal

carrots

spaghetti

oreos

Day 5: AM

leftovers

(not hot beverage)

Day 5: Snack

Brown Sugar Shortbreads

leftovers

Purchasing, preparing and packing are really important to make my camp meals work out right.  That will be my next post.

How Can You Give Attention to Everyone?

Time & Energy.

Limited quantities of these two commodities have plagued me for the last fifteen years or more.  

I've been contacted by someone who is most interested in managing several children in different age groups that aren't ~quite~ able to do home school learning tasks independently.  "How did you spend time with little ones before you had bigger ones to help when so many school age things require your attention?"  It's just one of the ways I've been asked about how to spend time and energy with such a diverse set of needs under one roof.

The way I spent time with my littlest children changed as our family grew.  It had to.  When I had just one little geezer who would sleep on the couch while I vacuumed the carpet every single day (another blog post all of it's own right there), I could spend my time differently than when I had seven children and my oldest just turned eight years old.  

 "How can you give attention to everyone?"

If I had to pick only three concepts that helped me navigate that question, I would choose Priority, Need, and Routine.  I'm only going to give them a short spot here because this is a crazy-huge and crazy-good question and a single blog post isn't nearly a fair answer.  I'll keep coming back and you keep hitting me with follow-up.  Between those two tactics I should be able to give it my fair treatment.

Identify Priorities

Prioritizing is a difficult concept when choosing wall paint.  When living with people and running a household and parenting children, it's more than complicated.  But it will be the foundation of how you make decisions about spending time and energy.  Consider things like:

What is the primary goal?

Why is that goal primary?

What are the secondary goals?

What would it take for a secondary goal to rise in priority?

What would it take for it to drop from secondary to tertiary?

Which goals would be completed with a short-term plan?

Which are long-term goals?

These are all big questions and the answers are different for every family. It could get even more complicated when you attempt to answer these questions:

What is my primary goal?

Would an adult watching my actions be able to identify my primary goal?

Would a child watching me know that?
Are there goals that are in conflict?

What if the primary goal becomes unattainable?

Hokey-Pokey!  Those are big questions.  Re-read that list.  Consider it as you proceed with your week.  

Question yourself. 

Question your motives.  

Test them for truth.
Repeat.

What is a need?

I have been told I have an odd approach to a lot of topics.  If that's true (and the witnesses are swarming around & chuckling in the cyber-background here), my understanding of a "need" is likely to be influenced.  I practice lots of things based on what is or is not a need.

My newborns don't need a bedroom.  They need a safe place to stay.
As we don't have allergies to them, breakfast can be toast & spreads.  Every day. Always.

Working together is time together.

When my children were all under eight years old, we had a busy house.  I didn't have time to play Candyland with pre-readers everyday. Mercy, that would be torture.  Candyland?  Oy!  Learning to cooperate was a need.  Menu variety at lunchtime was not.  Skills in family safety were needs.  Deep cleaning was not.  Team building within the family was a need.  Toddler playgroup was not.

Identifying the needs from the whole list of things young parents are TOLD are needs is a job that can make a Mom's life focused or diffused.  Consider some things you have been told are needs for your family.

Sunday dinner

Movie night

Family Game Night

Personal Time (Vague! MYTH! ARG!)

Peer group playtime

Date Night with Daddy/Mommy

arts & crafts hour

Couple's Date Night

Are those needs?  Really?  Do you really think that *insert famous achiever of choice* had all these things?  Do the emerging citizen leaders in struggling cultures point to Family Game Night as the met need that gave them the drive for greatness?

Nope.

Consider what is truly a need and attend to that.

ROUTINE

There are many approaches to the metering of time. I know schedule folks, routine folks, and relaxed folks.  There are positive and negative spins on all of these plans.

I've come to appreciate the routine.  And my kids have as well. 

Routine is predictable at its base.  Time is full of predictable events in sequence.  All things will be tended to in turn.

But routine is also flexible.  There is no crisis when people need to alter events.  A new need always supersedes the list of times and events.

When I had only young children, my routine was a great comfort to me as I looked at those faces.  It was a plan to address a great concern to me.How will I ever have time to spend with them all?  "Chill, Sarah," I would say to myself.  "Let's look at the routine.  Include some guys in clearing the table.  We can even do it as a bucket brigade.  Then we'll all fold laundry and maybe listen to an audio book.  These two will have time together with this toy set and the other two will have solo playtime while I check email and feed the baby.  Be mindful with your actions, young Mom, and you will be on your way!"

At the end of the day, I did spend time with them all.  It was intentional, focused time with them on a task of one sort or another. As the tots grew up in this, they could trust that I would spend time with them.  They didn't need to hang on me and demand.  The routine we had was predictable and all the reinforcing and encouraging times of the day would come again tomorrow.

Editor's note:  This is a HUGE topic.  I barely scratched the surface.  I have more to say here and intend to keep coming back but your specific questions can guide how I go about answering.  Comment here OR view "my complete profile" in the right margin under my picture and email me.  That's how this post came up next.  Someone asked.

Bicycle Boy and the Party Girl

Bicycle Boy and the Party Girl who steals his heart

Bicycle Boy is 16 now and is our second son.  He can make social and relational observations that others aren't aware of.  Seeking to maximize his options, he excels in drawing arts and piano while learning fiddle and expanding his interests in barefoot distance running, beekeeping, and home school high school survival skills.

Our Party Girl (a.k.a. Party Crasher) is almost two and a half years old.  She's nicknamed this because she was born about 3-4 hours after the first of several weekend guests arrived to our home.  We had a yard full and a house full, but I wasn't even here.  I saw pictures of the party online.  The ladies came to visit us in the hospital but were all gone by the time I got home Sunday afternoon.  She's a cuddler and looks the most like my baby pictures of all our children.

Bicycle Boy (BB) is so named (and so easily wooed by littlest sisters) because he spent nearly a month in the hospital after a bicycle accident.  As an eleven year old he took a handlebar end in the stomach region and crushed his pancreas against his backbone Memorial Day Weekend.  Though surgery went fine, the inflammation from the injury made eating without vomiting impossible.  He received TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition) for the rest of his stay.

Except the time it took for his dad and I to eat one meal every day or so (as BB was comfortable with it) he was with one of us at all times.  His sister, Fuzz, was about five months old at the time of the accident and she was with me at all times for meal reasons.  The four of us were there together for the first few days & nights and I woke any time BB made a noise and to feed Fuzz.  But we had eight other children at home and only so many people who could cover the needs for us there.  Those kids needed a parent in this time, too.

So, The Man stayed in the room on the pediatric floor and there never really was any question about it from the staff.  His work situation allowed him to do his work from the internet connection with the hospital.  He worked his 40 hours a week from the room.  I came home in the evening and left before dawn to be there for doctor's rounds.

And Fuzz went everywhere with us during the day.  BB would make chatter noises back to her as she practiced all her sloppy sounds.  She napped in the bathtub in the hospital room.  When we would go for wander walks around after he had recovered from the incision, he pushed her stroller.  For that month, they were their only siblings in a face-to-face experience.  They were special to each other and have been since.

In that hospital experience, which extended to a total of essentially 40 nights before the summer was over, we learned a lot of things.

Someone stays with the hospitalized family member always.  This was especially important for us in this case because it was a child.  No matter how hard they may try to be otherwise, hospital staff members are humans and mistakes happen.  One extra person actively engaged in one-on-one care and needs is The Most Valuable asset in the room.  The Man caught errors before they happened and the staff was very thankful for having someone who cared enough to make sure things were all correct every time.

Your health care (and that of your child) is your responsibility. You don't hold the experience, training or license to administer some of the care you may need when in the hospital but the decision is yours to make.  Don't make an uninformed choice.  

If someone on your healthcare team says something or is doing something that you don't understand, ask them to explain it.  

If you don't understand still, ask them to try again.  If you still don't understand, request someone else to try with you again.  

Sound embarrassing?  Maybe it is.  Get over it.  This is your life or your child's life and - like it or not - your responsibility.  

It's not that bad.  Most every day hospital staff are faced with blank-faced people who won't lift a brain cell to think about what needs to happen.  Most every day these employees are bearing the weight of life choices that are not their burdens to bear.  I know from many experiences that hospital staff members WANT you to ask questions and WANT you to know so YOU can choose.     

Write it down.  Everything.  Names.  Dates with time.  Hair color, relative height, watch or glasses style.  Whatever it takes to make your brain remember because you will want to remember and you won't be able to.

The Man and I worked on high-stress, slim rations and interrupted sleep for weeks at a time.  If we didn't keep notes, we would have risked errors and misinformation even more.  We used a simple spiral bound notebook and kept a daily log.  Who came when and for what reason.  If someone was new to us, we made notes to help us remember that person by name, face and department.  We referred to it often and in front of those we took notes on.  They knew we wanted to make good choices and were being proactive to avoid confusion as much as we could.

We were thanked often for these three things during our stay.   They don't take much time but they endeared us to the staff at the hospital.  BB's doctors would stop in after their long hours to see how things were going for all of us.  Nursing staff appreciated our presence on the floor.  They never needed to worry about that kid in #4-213.  His nurse light never went on for a pointless concern.

And they chuckled when they found out that little sister napped in the bathtub from 1-3pm every afternoon.

Melonheads & Birthdays

The Melonhead Boys: Pete, Tubby and Cob

It's birthday week here at our house and it's a great time to introduce The Melonhead Boys.

Pete (a.k.a. The-Boy-with-No-Nickname) is now 7 and the youngest of The Melonheads.  He intends to be right up to speed with both of his next-older brothers.  He's our only leftie and is clearly bound for greatness.  Just ask him.

Tubby is the birthday boy today and he's 10 this year.  He's all about relationships.  He'll drop everything to speak, share or work alongside someone else.

Cob (a.k.a. CrabbyPants) is 8 going on 9 this spring.  He's our second of three blue eyed boys.  He's cautious, confident and expects to excel.

There are a lot of child birthdays to celebrate here in a year.  As a child in our family, you get to have major influence over the evening meal on your birthday.  Dad usually wakes you up with a birthday greeting or a phone call.  And Grandma will usually call you from South Dakota.

Somewhere around the actual birthdate we have a little party.  The guest list is always the same.  My grandparents and my parents have been our only party guests for all these years.  Though our kids may have a very different idea about what makes a "birthday party", we've really come to enjoy it in many ways.
When our family was smaller, we had several birthday parties every year.  It eventually got to be kinda much.  Like impossible.  It was hard to find dates for gathering that fit for everyone and I got sick of all that leftover birthday cake.  bleh. so we went to quarterly birthday parties.  It's actually only three seasons - Winter, Spring and Fall.   (Our Fall Birthday party includes birthday kids from 4 months but it works so well for us and the kids enjoy it this way.)  If a party is a frequent event, it's not so special anymore, ya know?

Gift giving became easier for my grandparents when we offered to do the shopping for them. At first they felt a little awkward with our offer but when they saw what we could do with a planned budget, they really got to love it!  When we knew that we had some smaller gifts to provide, we kept a watchful eye out for great deals and built sets over time.  Now, 15+ years of parties into this experiment, we have a FABULOUS set of Lincoln Logs.  At first the great-grandparents of the birthday boy would say "that sure isn't very much when a guy only gets a box of wood sticks".  But in a couple of years of Birthday Lincoln Log Sets, they saw the greatness we had planned.  And were glad to say that they gave the family "a play set that will fill the playroom floor!"

And it does sometimes.  And under the chairs.  Behind the books.  In with Mr. Potato Head.
At least they are easier on the feet than Legos, right?

My Family

This is our family.  This picture is almost 2 yrs old at the time of my posting but it says a lot of things about us I think.  

• We have some great friends with an RV.
• Some of us try to look normal... sometimes.
• Our kids come by their "Squint for the Camera" tendencies honestly.

And

• I am pretty far behind in having family photos taken.

I'll do the introductions (since it would be pretty pointless for you to do them) in later postings so I can do a proper job of it.  But for now, here's the stats:

~ Two boys, a girl, a boy, two girls, three boys, a girl, two boys and a girl.
~About 16 months apart.  No twins.
~Two parents.
~Married in late winter '94. Children in Winter '95, Spring '96, Fall '97, Winter '98, '00,'01, and a bunch of years after that.  I have the dates and years written down somewhere. 

~Not Catholic.  Or Mormon.
~I know almost nothing about any other large families either on or off national television.

~Neither my husband nor I "love children".  We like our kids a whole lot but you won't find us seeking out everyone else's baby from here to Town just to goo-goo over them.

We have lots of interests under one roof.  Canning, running, gardening, banjo, piano, quilting, cat, writing, outdoor games, camping, computer programming, bee keeping, jewelry and glitz, miniatures, explosions, blues music, stout, singing in harmony, games, and lots of things I've forgotten because I forget things.

It's not been anything like the life I planned and prepared for.  It's just a fraction of what I have.  And I would not be the person I am today without it.  I'm living an extraordinary life.