Eating… I mean, Camping

B and I went on our semi-annual camping trip recently.  How does this relate to food?  Well, he maintains, no matter how hard I’ve tried to outdo his memory of our first camping trip together, that the best steak I’ve ever ever EVER made for him was when we first went camping.  As you may be able to figure out, I make steak somewhat often (which, now that I think about it… not that good for two people who both have family histories of high blood pressure and/or heart issues…).  That first time was even before I was that good at cooking, really!  In any case, I was eager to go back to the same park and give it another shot…

I like this park because nearly all the wood you’ll buy for your campfires is hickory, which, when you cook over the open flame, imparts this wonderful smokey taste of heaven.  Even the hot dogs taste better.

Trying to be healthy- a little salad.  Nathan’s hot dog on a potato-bread hot dog bun with relish, ketchup and mustard

This was the first time so far that I realized how deeply bento’ing has affected- and, in this case, improved– my entire life.  Yes, I applied my bento-skills to this trip.  How?  First, in packing things, I see more clearly how to best arrange things to fit into the given space.  And second, since it was just the two of us and there was no reason to buy small bottles of ketchup/mustard/relish- my mom has this HUGE wholesale-sized jar of pickle relish- I used my noggin and put some relish in an empty, cleaned baby food container.  It was enough for me, the relish-freak.  As for the ketchup/mustard, I used the two little bottles I’d bought in SF for dressing and filled them up.  It was perfect- just slightly more than enough for the two of us.  I can’t find them in any pictures, but they’re about 3 inches tall… they were in the picture in this post.  (bottom left of the picture)

New this year, our tent!  A Christmas present to B after I took him camping the first time, we can both stand up comfortably in the tent.  The front (left side in the picture) has a door, there are so many windows, and there is a partition in the center of the tent, making it two rooms.  But wait there’s more!  (Well, a lot more, but I’m only going to talk about one more thing.)  There’s a door on the side in the 2nd room (the rounded window, right side of the picture), so if you share with people, you can easily enter/exit your room even if they’re sleeping or changing or whatever.  There was plenty of room inside for our air mattress and then a general standing/staging area (we used it to change mostly), and we could easily have fit another air mattress.  DEFINITELY doing doubles’ camping sometime next year!  This is the tent- I only paid $35; it was an Amazon Christmas-time promotion thing (where you got to vote for what you wanted for an amazing price; this went up against like an Xbox or Wii but I knew I wouldn’t get the Wii so I voted for this for $30, when it didn’t win Amazon sent me an email offering it to me for $60.  Suckers!  I used a $25 promotional gift certificate from using my Amazon Visa and wound up getting it for $35.  HAWT!).  There are a ton of great features, I highly recommend this tent.

Dinner both nights- rib eyes; I know, we’re supposed to be “roughing” it, but I can’t help but spoil us because for now, while we’re traveling before we have kids, I might as well!  (Of course, with kids, we probably still will have steak…) 

The real, base reason I love camping?  The food, of course.  Non-stop eating really for a few days, though we do hike a bit and walk around.  I know, the steak looks a bit pink on the side, it got dark really fast (“Darkness falls thick & fast in the wild woods of PA”) and I couldn’t see very well, so I had to throw the steaks back on one night.  No big deal.  They were good. 

It’s always a pleasure to find joy in whatever I can with my baby… ah well, it was a great trip!

(I used to think it was gross to cook on this nasty rusty grill that is just left there by the parks department but the fire burns at like a billion degrees or something.  I think it’s safe.  Anyway, the one time I tried to cover it in tin foil, the foil melted.  I’d rather eat a little iron from the grill than uh… aluminum…)

How do you camp out?  😉