Hot Dogs, Ketchup, Hot Dog Buns and a stick... is this your grocery list and supply list all in one for your typical family camping trip? C'mon guys and gals! Live a little! There is no reason why you and your family can't eat good on your next family adventure and make the trip as well as the meals memorable.

With a little planning and thought put in, you can ensure you hear cheers and not growning at dinner time.

With the right gear anyone can prepare similar, if not better meals then you typically make at home. So lets start with the gear for a typical family campout:

A Coleman 2 Burner Stove
Single Fry Pan or Cast Iron Pan
Small/Medium Sauce Pan with Strainer lid
One Large Pot
Utensils 
Cutting Board 
1 Good Knife

Not a lot of gear, right? With these simple kitchen items you can make all of the following dishes described and pictured below. Don't be afraid to eat good during your camping trip. And, with help from the kids and family cooking and even cleaning up can be a quick and fun experience for everyone.

I have a "chuckbox" also known in Boy Scout circles as a "patrol box" to store all of the above items in as well as other camping supplies and cook from. Check out this Facebook video for more on the design and layout. 

A few tips to help you on a multiple day trip:

• Before the trip freeze the meat that you will be using later in the week - this will keep it the rest of the items in your cooler cold and keep your meat from going bad as well.
• Use vegetables for multiple meals i.e. peppers and onions for omelettes in the am and then the remainder for grilled veggies or toppings for burgers for dinner.
• To save time cut up your vegetables and other items needed for meals into ziploc bags or containers and mark them for what meal they are for. This save on food prep time and ensures less waste. 
• Pre-cook certain meats for such dishes as spaghetti or dutch oven dishes, this saves on time and the amount of dishes necessary during your trip.
• Maintain two coolers - one for meats and the other for veggies, fruit etc to ensure you don't contaminate your other food stores from meat defrosting.
  
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I hope these tips and meal options help inspire you to cook a little better on your next family camping trip. If you have recipes you love to make while camping send them to us... We would love to feature them! 

Need help planning your menu? Download the Hiking Forward Family Camping Menu Planner.

Keep Hiking Forward!

Scott

The Tribe Provisions HydeTech 20 oz Water Bottle I received is amazing.  It is a rubber-coated, vacuum-insulated, stainless steel water bottle with a clip.  After a campout, I could not find my water bottle.  When I found it a day later, the temperature was the exact same as it was when I lost it.  The whole time it had been in the ever-changing temperature environment of being lost in our van.
 
Once while I was trying to unclip my water bottle while running up a hill, I dropped it. It rolled all the way into a ditch and didn’t have a scratch or dent on it. My sister Lisa has a similarly-advertised water bottle of another brand; however, the metal is thinner, and it is already dented.

Another thing I like about it is that it's insulation and coating makes it feel the same even when the bottle contains hot liquid. I’ve had other metal water bottles that burn my hands when I put hot chocolate in them.

I highly recommend the HydeTech 20 oz Water bottle especially to friends who don’t like lukewarm water, need an easily cleanable bottle (for when you forget that you put hot chocolate in it for a few days), and won’t break or leak at all.

Advantages:

• Durable enough to withstand my adventures
• Brightly-colored so I don’t leave it in the grass
• Easy to clip to bags
• My mom doesn’t worry about me drinking from a plastic bottle that might leach chemicals that are be bad for me
• Wide mouth and simple design that is easy to clean with a bottle brush without mold hiding in the cap somewhere
• Keeps temperatures steady for a full 24 hours
• Easy to grip
• Never leaks

Disadvantages:

• The cap isn’t attached to the bottle when you unscrew it, so I have to be careful not to lose it.
• No straw feature so young kids tend to spill when drinking out of it. (This is an advantage for me as it keeps siblings out of my water bottle.)

Keep Hiking Forward!

Trent