Camping Food - need some tasty ideas please!

Going camping for 12 days in January with my Mum and Dad, DH and our two kids. Hoping for freshly caught fish, maybe even a Cray or two, perhaps some shellfish. We're taking our BBQ and my Dad will bring his Weber as well. We're staying in a DOC campground so there are no cooking facilities. I need some ideas in case we catch nothing and have to rely on food that we bring! So any ideas from those experienced campers on here!

BAcon and egg pie that can be eaten cold the first night. We take Ham (a small pressed one) for sammies.
If you freeze your chilly bin ( need a decent sized freezer) pack any meat into meal sized portions and pop into it frozen.
I take a mix of tins of fruit, vegies, baked beans, spaghetti and fish.
Pack things like rice into meal sizes and bag. Rice risotto mix is handy, as are some of the tinned meals or freeze dry stuff.
We are actually lazy eaters when camping, I always have eggs and bacon and fresh fruit and salad items, don't worry too much about meat.
Make up a dry mix for pancakes/hotcakes and the same of scone dough, all you then need to do is add water and an egg if needed. The scone dough can be made into damper or frypan scones or griddled scones.
If you are reasonably close to a store then milk and bread isn't so bad but it doesn't tend to keep for long unrefrigerated.

craig04, corned beef in a can is definitely not something that we have on a regular basis but it, along with a can or two of baked beans + a couple of fairly staple ingredients (onions and potatoes), is a very good standby for when camping to make this meal.

OUTDOORS STEW
potatoes (the number required dependent on potato size and the number of people to be served)
1-2 onions
1 or 2 x 440g can(s) baked beans
1 x 340g can corned beef, trimmed of any fat and cut into chunky pieces

Peel the potatoes and cut them into even-sized chunky pieces. Put the potatoes on to cook in water to just cover them, then chop the onion(s) into chunky pieces and add them to the potatoes. Boil until the potatoes are just half cooked, then pour off most of the water. To the almost cooked potatoes and onions add the baked beans and the corned beef. Allow the mixture to bubble gently for 10 minutes, then serve – as is, with tomato sauce and/or grated cheese.

Hope that helps and that you all enjoy your camping holiday.:-))

Can I suggest you ring the camp manager first and enquire about access to the camp freezer. At the one I go to the camp manager allows limited use of a freezer. Obviously you cannot take along a mountain of bread and 100 litres of ice (i.e. - don't abuse the privilege or it will be withdrawn) but you could take along a few small packs of frozen meat. Wrap them in a sealed plastic bag and put your name on it.

Seriously, you have a webber, which means you could do a roast, no problems with baked pumpkin and root vegetables to have with salad.

Ensure you have food for the day of your arrival. It is highly unlikely you will be catching kaimoana on that day. Travelling time and setting up camp will take up most of the day and a few coldies are usually all we can manage before we get down to the serious business of setting out the pre-dinner snacks and going 'visiting'. I usually do my ever popular boiled chicken and vegetables, all in one pot. It is very delicious.

May I just add that if you are nice people then others will not mind sharing excess catch. I am an instinctive fisher person and will often come back with heaps of fish whilst others, nothing. If I like my fellow campers, and they are happy to do their own filleting, then I am happy to share the bounty. But if they are mean curmudgeons who do not even bother to say hello or socialise, then they can just starve as far as I'm concerned.

If your campground has access to mussels, tuatua, pipis or cockles, then those are excellent stand ins. Make sure you harvest sufficient for the next meal at low tide, especially if the weather looks like it is not suitable for fishing.

Btw. I have never bothered to take a whole lot of prepared food, cans or anything else. I rely totally on the sea and the land around. Fresh produce, sauces, cheese, cooking oils and fats, flour, butter, my homemade sourdough, a pot or two of my preserves and jams, lots of eggs (I mean lots and lots) and condiments and herbs, etc makes up the bulk of my food packing.

Local farmers are always happy to let you harvest blackberries. Just ask but maybe it is still too early in January.

The cheap polystyrene chilly bins seem to be better insulators than the fancier plastic ones, and are cheap enough for you to own several. If you plan your meals for the week, and your frozen food packing, so that you don't need to open the chilly bins which have the later part of the week's food in them until their time has come, you may even find that some of the food is still frozen!
Otherwise, do as buzzy does, and rely on a combination of dry and tinned goods and local produce. Of course, if you are going to a doc camp in the deepest Ureweras or somewhere like that, you'll be relying more on freeze-dried tramping meals!

Mince, mince, mince. you can mkae spag bog, meatballs. hamburgers, lasagne. take dry pasta sheets and dunk them into boiling water. then cook onto of fire/ BBQ.

There is a fab product. called DEB, Continental - Instant mash potatoes.You can then have bangers & mash, mince with mash, fish cakes with tin tuna.etc.

Enjoy.

I hope you aren't suggesting that moi relies on tinned and dried products. I have no idea about dried food although I have been known to drag along a tin of salmon, canned oysters (canapes), the odd jar of olives and homemade tomato sauce (not ketchup), just in case. I now, also throw in a jar of Valcom Thai paste and tetra packs of coconut cream to 'spice up' the occasional fish meal.

Otherwise, I'm suggesting that there is hardly likely to be any day when kaimoana will not be available in some form or other, especially on the Coromandel and especially in the DOC camps because everyone is friendly and everyone takes care of everyone else, unless people are seen to be doing more taking than giving.

crayfish scallops, mussels,snapper,if not,take potatoes, and do hash browns or chips,rice risotto always a good stand by, make soup too,take heaps of potato chips too

Some good ideas guys, thanks heaps. DH and I are not virgin campers, but with kids and other adults along this is more than I've had to cook for before! we are going far north this year and I'm hoping for some lovely seafood to sustain us - my Dad is a pretty damn good fisherman and we should be able to bring in some good hauls, we'll be taking rods, nets and snorkelling gear, so fingers crossed!

If you have more than one chilly bin and the room as I said earlier freeze them (pop into freezer with lids but not on). Into one put some frozen meat suggest mince, sausages and steak (if you can afford). Put in more than 1 layer of plastic bags though as will bleed as thaws.
Also I freeze bottles of water and milk (just leave a gap at the top for expansion).
Also put your frozen water and milk in with the meat. Only open this one no more than once per day, even less if you can, Its your freezer.
Into the other chilly bin put marg, milk for next couple of days and stuff that needs chilling. eg cold meats, salad vege etc. This bin is your fridge.

Good luck and hope the weather improves from the present wet and windy display it is putting on at the moment.