Ideas For Camping Food??

  • Hi guys! I'll be going camping for 4 days (3 nights) in the next few weeks, and I'm wondering what kinds of healthy things I should take with me to keep my calories low. The standards of hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, s'mores, etc won't help me AT ALL! Anyone have any ideas for me? Here are the stipulations:

    1) It must be able to be kept in a cooler on ice for 4 days and still be good (so I'm afraid to take chicken)

    2) It must be able to be cooked on a grill or over and open fire, or be eaten raw

    3) I HATE FISH AND SEAFOOD! So, no fresh fish for me! Plus, you can't eat the fish out of the lake we're going to anyway.

    4) I HATE MUSHROOMS! Almost as much as I hate fish!

    Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated--thanks all!
  • Do you have a camp stove at all or pots you could put on the grill ? You could always take cannd soups and such ...
  • Yes, I do have pots and pans and such so canned food is not off the menu...
  • What about veggie / Boca burgers? Would they last in the cooler?
    We have a store here in the mall called "Hudson Trail Outfitters" that sells lots of freeze-dried food items for camping. I've never read the labels for nutrition (my husband likes to look at the shoes in the store while I wander around), but some of them might be OK.
  • I'd still take the chicken, just cook it the first night you're up there. Then you can do leftovers without worrying. When my DD and I go to the Upper Peninsula camping I marinate my chicken overnight and leave it in the marinade until we reach the campsite and are ready to cook. And we're driving from SW lower MI all the way up to the UP and it does just fine.

    If you're bringing your campstove and pots, what about corn on the cob?
  • Oh, hey, what about turkey burgers? Just don't eat the bun. Or bring WW ones.
  • I take the meat, except that I want the first night, still frozen. That way it helps keep the other stuff cold too. Plus sometimes I make stuff like chili or spaghetti sauce, and take that still frozen - depends how long we're going to be gone.
  • Good ideas guys--thanks!
  • We love to go camping! It's so fun.

    What we do is...I prepare turkey chili and put it in a big ziplock bag then freeze that...helps keep the other food cold. I do that with a couple of things. You could bring some canned chicken breast and brown rice and frozen veggies and do sort of a steamed/stir fried combo? We often do a lot of soups, or anything that we can freeze in a ziplock bag. My mom used to make chicken soup by using canned chicken broth, canned chicken breast and noodles and spices. It was really good and I don't suppose it was that unhealthy.

    Good luck!
  • lowfat burger not more than 7%, kraft ff cheese slices (Very good) Multigrain bread instead of buns. Make up 4 oz raw weight patties at home, freeze with wax paper between. You can make a cheese burger (I use kraft mayo 2g of fat) a little katsup and lettuce adn tomato. It is balanced in the Zone has around 400 cal and is low GI. Dont take chips and candy, instead take apples, bananas and grapes. Celery and carrot sticks. Chicken should be portioned out and frozen in advance. Use block ice and keep the chicken and all meats in air tight containers and sit down in the ice.

    For breakfast - have oatmeal with cottage cheese (FF) or hard boil a bunch of eggs, toss the yolks, have 2 egg whites with some bar s sliced ham 2 slices (lunch meat) and a 1/2 cup of no sugar added applesauce.

    If you are just counting calories and not following a plan, you can also have the eggs as snacks

    Buy some no cal butter spray to cook with. Really the only trick is buy FF and sugar free condiments, fresh veggies and fruit that you can eat raw or cook with a bit a of water and very lean meat - lean burger is cheapest. Pork and chicken can be frozen to last 4 days esp if you only use block ice.

    I camp a lot and used to raft for a week at a time and never run out of ice