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Camping like loons hacks – A modest introduction:
First of all: For our money here at Lone Loon Song, there simply is nothing like camping to unplug from the daily grind of everyday life and immerse yourself in nature. Anytime you can Get Out There is good. We’ve never regretted it. Not once. However, we have found that our camping experience can be vastly improved by following some really simple and useful tips and tricks. We offer them here.
Before we do, though, we’d like to talk about the kinds of camping you might be considering. Backpacking, canoe, or kayak trips require quite a lot of planning and experience. Ditto for the “Hike ten hours a day with a pack on our back”? We used to. We still have been known to get out the canoe from time to time. See the image above. But usually, we don’t really want to work that hard. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s just not for us. (“Maybe we ain’t that young anyyyyy more.” Apologies to the Boss.) The point is that there are plenty of blogs that can help you with that.
We aren’t going to do that here, because it has been covered and covered well elsewhere.
We just want to go camping and relax. Heck, we like a good hike. Two hours up the mountain, or similar. Get a swim before dinner. Build a nice campfire and kick back with a beer or a glass of wine, light the candles or the lantern and get ready to eat. Tune up the git-fiddles.
If that sounds like fun to you, then you, my good friends, have come to the right place. Read on to discover our tips and tricks especially for you.
1. Plan.
First, a little planning goes a long way. “A failure to plan is a plan to Fail.”
Who, what, when, where, and how. (The why is sorta self-explanatory.)
How many people? What are we gonna need? (We have a checklist that takes a lot of the guesswork out of this.) When? (This may be harder than you think to get people together – so an advance plan is essential.) Where are we gonna go? Do we need a reservation?
Meals. Just as you do at home, figure out how many breakfasts, lunches, and dinners you are going to need, and decide what’s on the menu. You can divide these up amongst yourselves, or you can potluck it. (Potluck is a lot of fun and can often be quite competitive. As a result, everyone wins!)
Where are you going to go? Research where you want to go. Is it dog-friendly? Available? Just simple stuff like that. It doesn’t take long – like all of these tips – but it will really contribute to your enjoyment of the trip.
In our Camping on The Cheap article, we talked a little bit about how to select a suitable place, so we’re not gonna go into detail here.
Camping is more fun if you keep it simple.
Keeping things simple is a lot easier if you are organized. We have a camping checklist that we recommend.
- Get some plastic boxes for Shelter, Kitchen, and Useful Stuff.
- Kitchen should really be just what you need. Pots, skillets and cooking and eating utensils.
- Shelter is for the tent, tarps, sleeping system, and ropes.
- Useful Stuff is everything else. Camping chairs, washing up stuff, bug stuff, candles, and the like.
Food:
A lot of folks make this harder than it has to be. One of our absolute favourite camping tips is to prepare our meals at home, freeze ’em, and then just warm them up. It’s so much easier than the whole Sous Chef of The Wild thing. Just give it a think for a minute: No cutting board, no prepping vegetables, no spices, nada. Make it in your kitchen, where everything is. For example, one of our favourite meals is chili. Everyone has their own chili recipe, or can find a good one from the web. A couple of days before you plan to Get Out There Camping we whip up a large pot. A huge pot. That is dinner for the night. Pour the rest into a zip lock bag, and write “chili” on it. Wait until it’s cool, and put it in the freezer. Walla. Now you have food that is ice for the cooler until it’s food again. Genius. ( We got that trick from our old friend Peter.)
Hey, Loonies! What is your favourite camping tip?
We have several, all of them good.
- We don’t know why, but stuff like stew, hearty soups, curry, chili, and spaghetti sauce, just always seems to taste better after a night in the ‘fridge. We can’t explain it. It coagulates, or something. (The only problem is, Once it’s frozen, in the bag, in the twilight, and you’re hungry and cranky they all pretty much look the same. That’s why you write “chili”, or “chicken curry” on it.)
- If you freeze everything you don’t need to buy ice. You have drinking water and food that’s ice to keep the cooler cold. So you saved space and helped to cool everything else. We can spread this out to other things, too. This works for marinaded steaks, chicken, or even shepherd’s pie. Try your favourites and let us know. (colinloon2@loneloonsong.com)
- By Popular Demand: Mom’s Famous Scallop Gratin. We make ’em in scallop shells – but little aluminum pie tins work just as well. Sautè as much or as little garlic and onion as you think you’re going to need. Put in some more garlic. Make a white sauce. (Get a recipe from the internet. Use cream or rich milk.) Put the onions and garlic in the white sauce just before you take it off the heat. Get a cheap white wine and pour enough in the white sauce that you can smell it clearly. You can’t possibly put in too much. Add basil, rosemary, salt and pepper and fennel. Pour it into your aluminum pie tins. 2/3’s will do it. Not too much. Dump in your raw scallops and make sure they’re evenly distributed. Cover them with breadcrumbs and grated emmental cheese. Wrap them in tin foil and put them in the freezer. When warming them up, do so slowly. Do not boil them. You’re welcome.
Eggs:
We stopped taking cartons of eggs some time ago. It’s just so hard to keep ’em intact, and once they break, they get all up into everything. What a mess. We happened to see a tip from Fresh off The Grid (a really cool camping blog) where they scrambled the eggs and poured them into a plastic drinking bottle. Take a marker and mark on the bottle next to a line – 3 eggs, and then 6 eggs. Brilliant. We modified that a little.
We even have a charming anecdote. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.
When I was 18 and getting ready to leave for college – after, of course, I had hitched the horses to the wagon – my Mom pulled me into the kitchen and taught me how to make an omelette. (BTW, some of you might think certain words are misspelled. They ain’t. We’re Canadians. No vowel shortage.) She said, “You learn this, and you’ll never starve.”
So I did. That’s neither here nor there. But later in life, I learned that she taught me a small variation that not many people know. For every 2 eggs, put in a shot of water. (Yeah, about like a shot of tequila.) It makes ’em super fluffy. She didn’t say it like that, but it’s easy to remember.
Finally, to really put that over the top, we tried a little experiment. We froze them. Wow. Try it.
Conclusion
While this is by no means a comprehensive post, we hope there is enough useful info here to get you out there in style!
Check back for updates. This blog is pretty organic, and we update it every week.