Campfire food for foodies
This summer, with any luck at all, you will find yourself in the great outdoors. And you will be hungry.
Whether at a lakeside cottage, a beach rental, a tent in the woods or an RV in a state park, you will likely be struggling with an ill-equipped kitchen, marginal refrigeration, and a stove, fire or grill that refuses to light. And you will be hungry.
With all these difficulties, you will prepare an entree of all-bean chili (you forgot the meat), a “salad” of canned green beans with bacon fat and vinegar dressing, and a blueberry cobbler half-burned in a campfire. And you will be in heaven, because one of the few undeniable truths of life, along with death and taxes, is that food cooked outdoors tastes way better than food cooked at home. And food cooked outdoors in spite of obstacles — uneven heat, missing ingredients, mosquito hordes — tastes best of all. This is triumphant cooking. Or, as a new book calls it, “Ultimate Camp Cooking” (Andrews McMeel, 2011).
Authors Mike Faverman and Pat Mac are avid cooks and stand-up comedians who took their act on the road in an RV. They’ve produced videos, entertained at conventions, and generally yukked it up over gas grills and campfires. Along the way, they have come up with a variety of tasty recipes.
Faverman and Mac have lots of good tips about planning for a camping trip, and almost too much to say on the subject of cleanliness and food safety. But their fuss-free recipes would be welcome at a weekend beach retreat or deer camp, and you may find you want to cook some of them in the comfort of your own kitchen. Sprinkle some pine needles around, scent the air with bug dope, and you’ll feel like you are in the great outdoors.
Ÿ Marialisa Calta is the author of “Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the American Family” (Perigee, 2005). More at www.marialisa calta.com.