How to do Glamping III Or...Making lists is fun to do.

This is my family's 3rd annual back-country glamping trip, and you get a glimpse of what it's like to go camping where there are zero modern comforts, except for what we pack in.  Now mind you, we pack in a LOT of modern comforts.  In fact, it's basically like staying in a luxury hotel...if a luxury hotel involves an OUTHOUSE, cooking for the crew over a fire, lots of mosquitoes, dirt, no shower and bees living in the outhouse along with the spiders.

Don't take this the wrong way, I love going on this adventure every year and I'd never pass on this camping trip.  It's an amazing experience for my kids and myself to pull the plug on the electronics and live and play simply.

The tricky thing is, it requires a lot of planning and prep work and if you're like many people, the very idea of trying to plan everything that goes into a large-scale camping trip is daunting, to say the least.  So I am sharing my experiences with you to help you know exactly what you need to bring....or pretty close as I'm sure you won't follow my menu plan to the T.  But it's easily customizable to your own needs.

I've written about how I meal plan for camping plus all kinds of other good stuff, as well.  This is what I do before every camp out to ensure I forget the least possible amount of things.  Forgetting happens and then you just Macgyver whatever you forgot.

Step 1:  Figure out what you want to eat every day for every meal.  I normally start with dinner as it usually involves the most work, and then I figure out breakfast because we have a nice breakfast every morning.  Lunch is always easy so it's a no-brainer, peanut butter, every lunch, every day.  If you are going camping with another family, decide if you are going to meal-share.  This year we decided to be in charge of all our own meals except for one.  Dutch oven potatoes (which my buddy made) to be served with campfire cheese sandwiches and dutch oven dessert (which I was in charge of).  You may want to meal share more meals than we did, but it makes things slightly more complicated. 

Decide what snacks and treats you want to bring.  It's amazing how much food you need to pack in when camping, but it's because there's usually not a store nearby to run to if you forget something or don't buy enough.   So, consider a few snacks a day for every member of your family.  Pre-packaged cheese, yogurt tubes, cookies, fruit and trail mix are all good options for snacks.

Step 2:  Make a list of what you need to buy at the grocery store and what you have already in your pantry.  If you don't need to buy it, don't.   Camping costs a startling amount of money.

My food list list.  I have everything separated into categories: What I need to buy at the grocery store, What I need to get from my pantry and My menu: every meal for every day.

Wednesday: Hot dogs roasted over the fire, veggies and dip and S'mores.
Thursday: Breakfast burritos.    Peanut butter and honey sandwiches.   Campfire cheese sandwiches and dutch oven bread pudding to go with my buddy's dutch oven potatoes....and S'mores in case bread pudding is a complete flop (it's always good to have a contingency plan).
Friday: Ham steak, biscuits and eggs.  Peanut butter and honey sandwiches.  Tin Foil dinners with diced melon and s'mores for dessert.
Saturday: Pancakes, sausage and eggs.   Peanut butter and honey sandwiches.

Step 3: Figure out what you can pre-make/assemble/freeze at home.  I freeze everything I can.  Remember, all we have are ice chests and food safety is a huge part of camping.  Nobody wants to eat something that's inadvertently spoiled, so the more items you have frozen, the better chance you have of keeping your food safe.

Step 4:  Start prepping, cooking, freezing and packaging and packing everything you can days in advance.  I have three storage boxes that are dedicated for my camping gear.  One for dishes and cookware (which are also exclusively for camping, thanks IKEA), one for food and pantry items that don't require to be kept cold and one for all the miscelaneous camping gear: matches, bug spray, newspaper, lanterns, flashlights, sunscreen, roasting sticks...   I also have two ice chests, one strictly for beverages and the other for the food.  This is because the beverage chest gets opened a lot and I don't want the food chest to be opened except when necessary to preserve coldness.
     * Put in the freezer your yogurt tubes and all candy, especially chocolate.

      * Make the filling for the breakfast burritoes: sausage, eggs and cheese (or whatever your family likes) and wrap them up in tortillas that are buttered to keep from getting soggy from the moisture in the filling and then wrap in two layers of heavy-duty foil.   Freeze.

     * Make your tinfoil dinners.  Cook your protein, par-boil your vegetables, season appropriately.  Wrap in heavy-duty tin foil, twice.    Freeze.

     * Make your own version of GORP:  Good Old Raisins & Peanuts.  My version involves: almonds, roasted peanuts, whatever pistachios I could find in the pantry, Reece's Pieces and raisins.
     * If you are going to make anything from scratch, assemble the dry goods in labeled zipper bags.  I made biscuits and bread pudding this trip from scratch so in one zipper bag I assembled the ingredients for the biscuits: flour, baking soda and powder, sugar and salt and then on the outside of the bag noted what else goes in, ie:  1/2 C melted butter and 1 C buttermilk.  For the bread pudding I assembled the sugar and spices that were required and marked it as bread pudding so it wouldn't get used for anything else.
     * I cut the carrots and celery for our veggies and dip.   I chose NOT to cut my melon as I felt that they could get squished.
     * Start packing all your non-perishable items.  Plates, cups, silverware, bug spray (lots of bug spray), sunscreen, flashlights, pots and pans, paper towels, toilet paper, lanterns, extra dry goods like flour and sugar, creamer and sugar for coffee, instant coffee packets, salt and pepper, vegetable oil, shortening, flour and lemon pepper (as there's a good chance I'll be frying up a batch of fresh-caught lake trout), hot chocolate mix, tea pot for making hot water for cleaning and warm beverages, matches, first aid kit, garbage bags, newspaper for starting fires, dish soap and hand washing soap.

     * Start packing fun things for the family: card games, bow and arrows, bb gun, frisbees, balls, nets to catch tadpoles and fishing gear (haha just kidding, that's the husband's job).

     * Gather up fun things for you: books, magazines and crafty stuff.

This isn't a complete list, you've got to remember your sleeping bags, pillows, blankets, tents, clothes (Make sure to pack appropriate clothes for where you are going.  We are way in the back country at about 10,000 feet above sea level, trust me, it was cold at times.  We brought lots of pants and jackets and even winter coats), tables, dutch ovens, canopies, air mattresses....or bunk bed cots if you've got 'em (best camping purchase EVER!).

Stay tuned, recipes will be coming up in future posts.  Lots of good stuff this camp out, and maybe a flop...it happens.

Hope you enjoy my pre-camping process.

Thanks for reading!

Heather

Please take a look at my previous posts on glamping:

How to do glamping

 
How to do glamping II

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How to do Glamping Part II

If camping ain't easy, I don't want to camp.  So I spend my off-weekends, planning how to make each successive camp-out that much easier. It starts with planning, planning and more planning.Take a page from my years of experience to make your next camp-out a breeze.

This is my second post on how to make glamping easy.  Click here for other tips and tasty recipes from the post, How to do Glamping.

The easiest way to make your camp-out easy, if you ask this mom, is to make the meals and snacks as low-pressure as possible. When the food is easy, you can spend lots more time doing the fun stuff.

First, plan what you're going to eat for each meal. I have a meeting with my fellow moms and together we decide what we are going to eat and when.  We usually plan to eat as a group a couple times during the camp-out, typically we'll each make one dinner and one breakfast for everyone.  Then on the days we aren't sharing food, we still make similar things, like hot dogs, chips and fruit on the day we get there, because, really, who wants to cook after you've just set up camp.

Tin foil dinners are always a classic if you've got a spare night. Pre-pack each pouch before you leave with the meat, rice, veggies and seasoning, freeze them and store in a zip-lock bag to avoid cross-contamination.

My number one rule about cooking while camping is to prep as much food as I can while in the comfort of my home kitchen, then pack it away in ready to go pouches.  There are a number of reasons for this rule.

1-I don't want to clean while I'm camping.  This includes (especially) washing a bunch of prep dishes.  Ugggh.
2-Cooking is much more difficult in the wild outdoors.  Cook where it's easy.  I have camped with only a very small table before.  Can you imagine trying to chop onions and peppers and make meatballs with no prep space as most of the very small table was already being used by a water jug and a myriad other things. I learned a lot after that camping trip.
3-I'd rather be having fun, than cooking.

Dinner

You can take anything camping.  Imaging how easy it would be to take tacos.  Cook your meat, cool it and stow it in a plastic zip-lock bag, then freeze it to help with spoilage.  Then when you get to your campsite, you only have to thaw it and warm it up. Pre-shred your cheese. Chop some lettuce. Pour salsa in a zip-lock bag. A baggy of jalepenos, some sour cream and tortillas. Or, even easier, make a Dorito Pie.  Buy individual bags of Doritos, toss all your taco fixings in and devour, no tortillas needed.

An easy, dutch-oven dinner is giant meatballs and veggies.  Take some ground beef, bread cubes and salt and pepper and wrap meat around a Laughing Cow cheese.  Freeze them on a cookie sheet individually and once they are solid, throw them all in a zip-lock bag.
 

Bunch of vegetables: I like potatoes, carrots and onions, a little pre-chopped garlic and already diced green onions for garnish.  Par-boil your potatoes and carrots.  Saute your onions in advance also.  Pack everything into a well-labeled zip-lock bag, everything in one giant bag, individually bagged inside the bag. I keep everything separated in their own individual bags to keep flavors from melding.

Time to eat: Make sure you have plenty of hot charcoal on the bottom of your dutch oven and plenty to go on top. Throw some oil into your dutch oven, once the oil gets hot, toss in your garlic, saute it for a minute and then throw in your meatballs.  Brown the meatballs, throw in your veggies and sauteed onions, add a can or two of cream of mushroom soup, let cook until the meatballs are cooked through and you have a nice, satisfying meal.

Rice Salad is always nice to take with because none of the ingredients will get soggy between when they are packed and when you want to eat. Pre-cook everything, the rice, the bacon, chop the pepper and olives all in advance, bag everything individually and then pack all the ingredients into a large bag. Click here for my rice salad recipe!  This is a great side dish for hot dogs or if you're just having sandwiches. And when you want to assemble the salad, everything is right there ready to go, and all that is needed is a large bowl and spoon for mixing.

Lunch

My go to lunch.  Because I want things low-fuss and I have a personal issue regarding soggy deli meat, I love the ease of peanut butter and honey tortilla roll-ups.  It means I don't have a loaf of bread to get squished and my kids and husband alike will eat these happily.

Chips. These make a good side-dish as well as an easy snack.

Breakfast

I always cook breakfast when we camp.  Do I always cook breakfast at home?  Hell, no!  Camping though, is special.

An easy way to store eggs is to crack as many as you'll need into a large-ish container with a lid. I've used a kefir bottle and it worked beautifully. It's kind of an adventure watching the egg yolks get sucked down into the bottle, you cross your fingers and hope there isn't any over-flow. Note I have labeled this bottle of kefir, eggs. 

Frozen, pre-cooked sausages. They are easy to throw on a griddle and I like having protein at breakfast.

Pre-assembled biscuit mix.  As you can see the proportions here are enough for two batches of biscuits, and yes, I bake them in one of my dutch ovens.

I drink a lot of kefir, obviously, but this kefir bottle has regular milk for my coffee and the water bottle with the initials, BM, ummmm, is butter milk for my biscuits. I could have bought a quart of milk, but I had the kefir bottle empty and felt I could polish off the gallon of milk I already had.

Ham steak.  This is so I can fry it up and serve it with my biscuits for breakfast biscuits.  Fresh biscuit with a slice of salty, smoky ham on it with a side of eggs.  Yes please!

I also always have pre-made pancake batter, butter and syrup as my kids and husband are always happy to eat pancakes while camping.

If you drink coffee or tea for breakfast bring it. I like instant coffee packets for their ease of use and cleanliness.  Don't forget the sugar and creamer if you take it. You'll also need a tea pot to boil your water.

Snacks

Whatever your kids like to eat.

Whatever your husband likes to eat.

Whatever you like to eat.  Learning lesson, the un-wrapped Reece's minis melted and became a giant mass of chocolate and peanut butter.  The M & M's and taffy worked much better as camping treats.  Bring more snacks than you think you'll need.  You're always hungry while camping.

Individually packaged cheese slices.  Genius.

Dessert

S'mores.  Every night.  These s'mores were made by sandwiching the marshmallow between an Oreo.  Yummy!

 You may be asking yourself, is all this work worth it?

Oh yeah.

Happy glamping!

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How the Hearth does Camping....actual camping

I am going to start this post with the most vital piece of our camping puzzle.

 

The outhouse.  And when I say outhouse....I mean OUTHOUSE.  This thing is legit.  For real.  No foolin'.  I mean, I am actually afraid of falling in this puppy never to return.  Well, not really, I'm pretty sure if I fell in, sooner or later somebody would have to use the facilities and would find me. 

Rustic.

Old timey.

Torn up pieces of an old Sears Roebuck catalog for T.P.  I'm wondering if I can still order one of those permanent machines from them...

I actually spent a good portion of my nights (1 am....5 am...finally 7 am, phew, you can go on your own) hiking up here as My Oldest has a bladder the size of a dime and I don't want to restrict her from staying hydrated at 10,000 feet above SEA LEVEL!  Oh yeah.  If you need to practice breathing techniques to get to Everest, this is where you go.  I would whistle as we walked.  No sense running into a bear or coyote as we're going to the facilities.

And I'm just saying, if these fellas are up here, you KNOW there are other things that I just can't see.  Shhh, don't tell the kids.  I assured them there were no bears.  Then I made sure to clear the tent free of any candy or food of any sort...just in case.  About the deers, yes, deers.  We saw these two fellas several times and at one point I was probably 20 feet away from one of them.  If only I had my camera out.  Face smack. 

How we cooked.  To be fair we also had our gas stove up there and used it once or twice.  Ummmm...a thing about lighting charcoal.  Bring a chimney.  My buddy and I were sent up to cook while the menfolk fished...and we had to light these ourselves...without the intuitive knowledge that men have regarding fire and food.   They weren't the briquettes that already have lighter fluid in them, either.  Nope.  I am pretty sure we went through an entire newspaper and several paper towels trying to get the dang things to light.  Then on top of that we used about 4 times more briquettes than we needed, JUST TO MAKE SURE!  And then on top of that, we tried to chop wood ourselves to make kindling to help get the fire going to help get the charcoal going....with an ax. An ACTUAL ax.  

Yeah....so I at least didn't attempt to cut my thumb and toe off like my faithful assistant....who is pregnant. gulp.  That coulda been bad, real bad. After she ummmm...did her chopping attempt, I took over and I'm pretty sure I had about the same amount of force a newborn kitten would have when striking ax to wood. Very effective.  

In case you are worried we starved this night, have no fear, somehow we got the charcoal to light and enjoyed a lovely dinner.  Many, many hours later.  All appendages still accounted for.

Where we were.  Pretty.

How we mountain manned up.   Yup, it's the machete again.  You have no idea how handy a machete is to a man.  In all things.  Constructing shelves, camping, fending off wild forest beasts...

What we did for fun.  The regular fish fishing wasn't great.  But the crayfish (crawdad?) fishing was AWESOME!!  I had no idea you could catch a crayfish on a fishing pole, turns out you can.  

We have at least 6 in there and they were sure fun to look at...but NOT touch. We had at least one pinching/throwing of the crayfish incident.  

Disclaimer....

No crayfish were killed during this camping adventure.  Flung at a mom who was trying to take a picture at the time and then dropped on the ground...maybe.  But we're catch and release kinda people.  At least this time.

Sweet child of mine, smile for the camera. 

Don't wiggle.

Smile normal.

No laughing.

With teeth.

Child!

This is no time for fun!!

TAKING PICTURES IS SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!

Phew.  Thank you.

What a fun time.  In addition to all of the above, there was BB gun shooting, bow and arrow shooting, applying of mass quantities of bug spray, frog catching, butterfly catching, playing in the swamp, more applying of bug spray, running and playing wolves, bike riding, hiking and deer spotting.

Thanks for reading!

Heather

How the Hearth does Camping...Fun in Fairview

Do you like to camp?  We do.

First of all, we go to the most remote area we can find.  Thanks to my best, good buddy who invites us every year (two years running), for our annual wilderness fun adventure at her family's plot of land in the vastness of the Manti La Sal National Forest.  This area is amazing for many reasons.  It's off the grid so no cell phones.  It has deer, deer and more deer.  Frogs.  Crayfish.  Regular fish.  Trees.  Rocks. Okay, you get the picture, it's awesome.

My kids get to spend almost a week running wild in the wilderness.  Shooting bows and arrows and BB guns.  Catching frogs, butterflies and pollywogs in their nets.  Playing wolves and fishing to their hearts' content.  The nearest town is called Fairview, it's a good hour down the canyon, but we spent a day there having some small town adventures this time.  We were there for the Pioneer Day celebration...remember, this is Utah, we love EVERYTHING pioneer.   So, come along for a little Hearth Adventuring.  This is the Fairview portion of our vacation.  All the camping stuff will come later.

Fun in Fairview

If you ever were concerned that there wasn't a shrine to love and devotion, worry no more.  Thanks Fairview.

The mammoth they found just up the canyon....pretty darn close to our campsite.  Ummm....they've been officially declared extinct....right?

Operator, hold please.  Let me connect you.  
Okay, a hands-on museum makes museum-ing so much more fun for the littles.

Mom, are you sure this is how phones used to be?  Where's the touch screen?  I stick my finger in and do WHAT?

Oh my gosh, Becky...
Side note, I feel like she could slip right into this time period with her little drop-waist dress and hair pulled back in braids. My little early 20th century girl.

Course, as I'm the mother of two, early 20th century girls, I'd set My Oldest to cooking the supper. Cornbread would be nice, dear.

 Don't forget to do the laundry.

 And get a permanent for your hair!

 All the while My Youngest is busy threshing wheat with Pa.

 Come on, put your back into it.

 Then we'll go for a buggy ride once Ma has finished eating her bonbons and doing her nails....right?  Because I'm sure that's what early 20th century mothers did while they set their young to work.

We also enjoyed the Pioneer Day parade on the 24th of July that was pretty much the best parade around if you ask my kids.  Because???  Mass quantities of candy were thrown. My Youngest used her butterfly net to capture all the goodies.

Good times.

Thanks for reading.

Heather

How to do Glamping

It's all over Pinterest...Glamping.  Glamorous Camping.

This is often interpreted by the person doing the glamping, but basically it involves taking bathtubs with you to your campsite, candles, gauzy fabric, doilies and a tricked out 1950's camper that you have glamped out with vintage inspired curtains, lots of cushions and cutesie touches that add an air of comfort to your camp out.

I asked The Mister if I could bring a bathtub with us camping this last weekend, and if he would kindly heat water over the fire and fill it up so I could enjoy a bath in the wilderness complete with bathsalts, a frothy beverage and a nice book...let's just say the answer was no.

So, let me show you how I do glamping.

Glamping for me is all about ease of camping.  When I camp, I want to do minimal cook prep-work and minimal clean up afterwards.  So what's a girl to do?

Do whatever I can to prep food the day before we leave.

1.  Homemade veggie dip.  Just buy the sour cream, the packet of dressing and mix them up and put them back in the sour cream tub.

2.  Par-cook a pile of potatoes.  Potatoes take a long time to cook, so if you give them a quick 4 or 5 minutes in boiling water, you will be rewarded with time.  I just sliced and par-cooked.  Then I was ready to put them in the tin foil dinners and for home-fries for breakfast...or breakfast burrito...or...well, there are lots of options with potatoes.

3.  Dice an onion.  Again, to be used for many things.  For me, the onion was going in my tin-foil dinners and my potato salad.  It seems an easy thing to dice an onion, but not while camping.

4.  Mince some garlic.  Yup.  That too.

5.  Cook the veggies for the potato salad I made, thanks Sweet Little Bluebird Here's what I did: I had all the potatoes in the same pot.  When the ones I was par-cooking were done, I just scooped them out, put them in ice, and kept the rest of the potatoes at a boil, dumped in the green beans and let them finish cooking for another 10 minutes or so.  I waited until we were eating the potato salad to put the onions and garlic and dressing all together.

6.  Slice up a melon.

7.  Slice up cucumbers to eat with said dip.

Bag everything up, all ready to go.  You will be so much happier to just reach into the cooler and grab out whatever you need, no knife required! It might be a good idea to double bag the onions...they can be a bit pungent.

Pre-make your tin foil dinners, people!!  I loved this.  Here's what I did, now I have 4 people to feed as well as whoever was going to mosey over and want a bite of what I made, so I made plenty.

1.5 lbs ground chuck
carrots, chopoped
par-boiled potatoes, sliced
onions, diced
1 C. rice, boiled
Worcestershire Sauce
Lipton Onion Soup Mix
4 Tbl. Butter
Salt and Pepper

Lay out 4 very large rectangles of tin foil.  Ready and waiting.  Combine the chuck and rice in a bowl.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Form into meatballs and place evenly on the foil.  Throw on the carrots, potatoes and onions, as much as sounds tasty.  Sprinkle on some Worcestershire sauce over everything, 1/4 of the soup mix and 1 Tbl. butter cut into smaller pieces.

Fold up neatly.

Place packets into zipper bag, safe and sound until you have some blazing coals ready to cook your dinner, then cook for approximately 45 minutes until the meat is done.

Yup, I don't even want to mix the pancake batter because that means a big bowl to clean.

Also bring plenty of beverages for you, your kids and anybody who wanders over to your campsite eager for a drink.  Also, lots of snacks!!  Fresh air makes everybody hungrier.  Jerky, grapes, pita chips and hummus all makes for a tasty treat.  We designate one cooler for food and one cooler for drinks, that way we're not constantly opening the cooler with the food, so it stays at a safe temperature.

And finally...the most important thing to bring glamping...

Bug spray.  And lots of it.  Nobody is happy if they're being nibbled on by insects.

So, no bathtub for me, but R&R and minimal cleaning makes Heather a happy Glamper.

Thanks for reading.

Shared here:
Kitchen Table Art


Heather

Picnic Rice Salad

If you're ready for a new salad to take to bbqs or picnics, I think you will love this one.  It's light, thanks to the rice...unless you count the bacon grease in it.  It's refreshing, thanks to the vinegar and it's fresh thanks to all the veggies.  It's also great if you need to make something gluten free, dairy free or vegan (you can omit the bacon).

Picnic Rice Salad
4 cups combo of cooked brown rice and wild rice.  Don't overcook!
4 Slices cooked bacon, cut into chunks, reserve 2 Tbl bacon grease
1/2 red onion, diced
Handful of mushrooms, chopped
2 Cloves garlic, minced
1/2 Cup Kalamata Olives, chopped
1/2 red pepper, diced
1/3 Cup walnuts, chopped
1 Can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
White Wine Vinegar
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
****these ingredients are just estimates, change according to your tastes, add more or less of something****

Place rice into large bowl, set aside.  Set chopped bacon aside.  Saute onions, mushrooms and garlic in 2 Tbl. bacon grease until softened and tender.  With the rest of the bacon grease, make a bowl out of tin foil and pour the rest of the grease into the foil bowl.  You can let this sit on your counter and cool and then throw it away.  Great solution to the bacon grease conundrum!

Pour sauteed veg mixture (and any of the bacon grease in the frying pan) into the rice.  Add the chopped Bacon, Kalamata Olives, pepper, walnuts and artichokes to rice.

Make a vinaigrette using a 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 ratio if you prefer, of olive oil to white wine vinegar.  I prefer the 2 to 1, I like the tang of vinegar.  I would say you need approximately 1/3 to 1/2 cup of vinaigrette.  Just taste as you go.  Salt and Pepper to taste, let cool in fridge before serving.

Enjoy!

Thanks for reading.

Heather