Menu planning

Well, we will be camping the weekend of June 12th - hubby had me make reservations at the Dam West campground at Carlyle Lake, which is run by the Army Corps of Engineers. You can make reservations online for any federal campsite here. It allows you to make reservations up until the end of May 2010. You can see a map of the campsite and if you click on or hover over the campsite, it will tell you how much shade is at each campsite, whether it's near the lake, etc. It amazed me that this campground was already completely reserved during Memorial Day weekend 2010.

It's time to talk about menu planning. The first thing to determine is how you're going to cook at your campsite.

If you have an electrical hookup and an electric skillet and a two burner electric stove, you can pretty much cook like you do at home. If you don't have an electrical hookup, figure out if you're going to cook over a fire, cook on a BBQ grill, or on a camp stove.

You should make a menu plan for the days you'll be camping. Once you figure out what you want to cook and write it down, you can then make a shopping list for the grocery store. As an example, here was our menu plan for Memorial Day weekend:

Friday dinner - McDonald's

Saturday breakfast - Pancakes, sausage, milk

Saturday lunch - Sandwiches, chips, soda

Saturday dinner - Bratwurst, macaroni and cheese, soda

Sunday breakfast - Scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, milk

Sunday lunch - Sandwiches, chips, soda

So my shopping list was:

Pancake mix
Precooked sausage (like Banquet or Armour)
Bread
Lunch meat
Potato chips
Bratwurst
Macaroni & cheese mix
Eggs
Bacon (get the precooked variety; you just need to warm it up in the skillet and you won't have all that grease)
Shredded cheese
Margarine or butter
Milk
Soda

If you have any questions, please feel free to comment and I will answer. Next time, I'll talk about menu options. Until then -

Happy camping!

Diane