• Description
• Contents
• Introduction
• Sample Route
• Reviews
• Further Reading

CHAPTER 1

Food and the Great Outdoors

Food and the outdoors are two of the great pleasures in life. Enjoyed together they can be the making of seriously special experiences. Picture your favourite wild landscape early in the evening. You’re pleasantly weary from the day’s exertions, whatever they may be. You’ve pitched your tent, a snug bed awaits, and you’re with your favourite companions. Now imagine you can smell something delicious cooking… not just a rehydrated ready meal, but real food – tasty, hot, with fresh local ingredients, and nutritionally balanced to help your body recover overnight and fuel you well into tomorrow’s adventures. You eat while watching the sun go down. Life really doesn’t get much better.

Of course it’s not always like this, but if you spend enough time in the outdoors with the right knowledge and a bit of application, there are certainly times like this ahead – lots of them.

CAMPING IN THE UK
The way many of us camp in the UK is rather different to overseas. We live on a relatively small island in which there are few large expanses of true wilderness. As the countryside is crisscrossed by roads, we are often able to pitch camp directly from the boot of the car if we want. This is very liberating for the camp chef – with few restrictions on weight and volume, your menu need be limited only by your imagination.

Unlike many other countries, the national parks of the UK are sprinkled with settlements, including fair-sized towns with supermarkets, cafés, shopping centres and markets, so even when not using a car, you rarely need to carry more than a couple of days worth of supplies. This has quite a significant effect on the kind of food taken when backpacking. In Asia or North America, trekkers or hikers might carry large quantities of staple ingredients, such as lentils, flour or oatmeal, with which to make a variety of simple meals. In the UK, we’re more likely to carry small packets of specific ingredients bought with particular menus in mind, and re-stock regularly.

The relative accessibility of the British outdoors can also mean we’re potential suckers for gadgets that might not work very well. This is because those who are used to making long, self-supporting trips tend to use simple, bombproof equipment that is easy to maintain and whose design has stood the test of time – they know their lives may depend on each piece of kit doing its job with complete reliability, and are thus unlikely to buy on a whim. The ‘weekend warrior’ of the UK, on the other hand, loves innovation, and outdoor shops and websites carry an overwhelming array of shiny camping gizmos that claim to be lighter, or perform their allotted task faster or more efficiently, than the others.

The appetite for such things is a powerful driving force in innovation, and has undoubtedly influenced the development of some really brilliant kit. However, it also means that there is a huge amount of over-engineered gimmickry out there, so beware the disease we call ‘shinything-itis’ – it tends to afflict visitors to places such as Ambleside, Keswick, Betws-y-Coed and Fort William, with the most severe outbreaks occurring on wet bank holiday weekends!

The booming outdoor kit business is fuelled by an equally healthy outdoor publishing industry, with dozens of magazines and websites offering advice on everything from where to take your next trip to choosing the right ultra-light, antibacterial, breathable, glow-in-the-dark, performance potholing underpants. In writing this book, we’re very aware that we’re making ourselves part of all that. All we can say is that while we hope our ideas are useful, they are only ideas, and there are lots of alternatives. Whether or not you buy something is entirely up to you, but we suggest that if you don’t need it, don’t buy it. Chapter 3, Equipment, should help you decide which kit you really need and what you can do without.

This book does not deal specifically with the kind of camping where you have an indoor kitchen at your disposal, such as staying in huts, cabins, caravans, camper vans, motor homes or RVs. That said, if you’re trekking between huts, much of what goes for backpacking still applies, and while Chapter 7, The Camp Kitchen, won’t really apply to the caravan and camper-van fraternity, some of the advice on packing and planning will still be useful.

If you’ve already done some camping, the chances are you’ve had plenty of evenings where the menu comprises an instant-soup starter followed by cheesy pasta from a packet, with a slab of cake or chocolate for dessert. Of course there’s nothing wrong with this – it’s a hot meal, it’s easy, and it keeps everyone fuelled until morning. But you probably wouldn’t want to eat it every night, and why should you stick to the same old thing when there’s not much worth eating that can’t be cooked outdoors? It seems a shame that for many people, the camp-food experience never seems to progress any further than a rather bland functionality.

Cooking in camp should be not just about fuelling your body, it should be about food! We can’t see any point in having an immaculate camp, and the shiniest all-singing, all-dancing stove and equipment, if all you’re going to cook is ration packs or dehydrated ready meals. We’ve eaten some fantastic meals prepared in camps around the UK and overseas, and even brought the ideas back to the home kitchen. Part of the magic often comes from using local foods – you’ll find more on this in Chapter 8, Wild, Local and Seasonal Food.

Wonderful organisations such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme, the Scout Association, Outward Bound, the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigades, not to mention countless switched-on schools and local and national outdoor activity centres, are responsible for introducing thousands of people to the joys of the outdoors. The main focus of the experiences offered by these groups varies – participants might be encouraged to challenge themselves physically, to learn new skills such as navigation, or just to take time to appreciate the natural world. This is all great, but there is often surprisingly little emphasis on food. This is odd, because in other contexts we spend a massive amount of time thinking about nutrition and cooking. Teaching kitchen skills in the outdoors is a brilliant way of imparting knowledge that can be useful in other situations.

On a long evening in camp, preparing a meal can be part of the entertainment. This is equally true whether you’re camping solo or as part of a group. If you’re alone, cooking is something to do to amuse yourself. In a group, it can be a great way of engaging everyone in an activity where each person has a vested interest in the outcome.
Food and Performance

We reckon that most people who love the outdoors have a great deal in common, even though their achievements and aspirations may differ. High on the list is the simple love of being self-sufficient in a wild landscape. And it doesn’t matter if your preferred discipline is walking, running, climbing, paddling or biking – food is a part of the experience, and a significant factor in performance and enjoyment.

Many people are now beginning to think more carefully about what they eat, and if you’ve spent any time involved in energetic sports, such as running, mountain biking or hill walking, you’ll probably already be aware of the impact food can have. At best, a bad meal can put the dampeners on a great day out; in a race or other challenge, even the perception that one has not eaten well might impact on performance. At worst, poor nutrition can leave you vulnerable to dangerous conditions such as exhaustion and hypothermia. A good meal, on the other hand, can restore poor spirits and raise morale like almost nothing else. It’s part physiology, part psychology, but mostly common sense.

PART TWO

RECIPES

Hot Breakfasts

Kick-start the day with this warming, energy-packed and scrummy plateful. It makes a great dessert too, but the calorie count is pretty stratospheric, so it’s better to enjoy the decadence then go out and burn it off with a big day out.
For a slimmed-down version you can leave out the butter, but be prepared for your crunchy crumble to become a rather soggy mulch (still tasty, though).

Breakfast Crumble
Serves 2
Pans: 1 or 2
Stoves: 1
Other equipment: plate, spoon
Cook time: 5-10 minutes
Pack weight: about 180g per person
Prep time: 5–10 minutes
Vegetarian

 

• 1 golfball-sized knob (25g) butter or margarine • 6 digestive biscuits • 2 handfuls porridge oats • 2 handfuls mixed dried fruit (raisins, sultanas, cranberries, papaya, pineapple, mango) • 5 spoonfuls instant custard powder water • optional: a handful of cornflakes for extra crunch, 1 teaspoon mixed spice or ground ginger, small handful chopped mixed nuts, fresh chopped banana
 

Crush the digestive biscuits in a plastic bag, or on a plate or board with the back of a spoon. Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat. Add the crushed biscuits and oats to the butter and stir well to form a crumbly mixture. If you have only one pan, set the mixture to one side in a mug, bowl or bag if you have one.
Bring half a mugful (200ml) of water to the boil and use it to make up the custard (stir carefully to avoid lumps). Add the dried fruit and any other ingredients you’re using to the crumble mix and serve immediately with the hot custard.

 

Hint: serve the crumble on top of the custard rather than the other way round – this way it keeps its crunch!

Snacks, Soups,
Side Dishes and Starters
 

Scroggan

This isn’t so much a recipe as a collation job. You can buy all kinds of trail mixes – health food shops usually have a good selection, as do some supermarkets – but do you often find there’s a bit too much of one thing and not enough of the ones you really like? Much the best option is to make your own.

Makes about a 1 litre jarful
Equipment: bag or bowl for mixing
Prep time: 5 minutes
Pack weight: 1 mugful (200g) provides ample snacking for one
    person on a big day out
Vegetarian (except for Jelly Babies)

Scroggan’s name comes from the original list
of suggested ingredients:
S – sultanas
C – chocolate
R – raisins
O – orange peel (candied)
G – ginger (crystallised)
G – glucose
A – anything else you fancy
N – nuts

Below is a list of suitable ingredients – aim for a ratio of about 2:2:1 of fruit:nuts/seeds:sweets. This will mean the overall mix is carb-rich, but not too sweet. Take your pick of ingredients from the list in the box opposite and then just mix ’em and bag ’em!
 

• unsalted peanuts • brazil nuts • hazelnuts • almonds • cashew nuts • coconut chips • sunflower seeds • pumpkin seeds • banana chips
• sultanas and raisins • dried cranberries • dried apricots • chopped dried papaya • chopped dried mango • dried, pitted cherries • dried, pitted dates • dried, pitted prunes • crystallised ginger (the dry, sugar-coated type, not the sticky syrupy version) • Jelly Babies/Dolly Mixtures • Smarties/M&Ms • chocolate chips/buttons (dark ones are less sweet) • fudge, chopped small (fudge fingers are better for this than the crumbly stuff, which tends to just disintegrate when mixed with everything else) • granola clusters (these go soft after a day, so add them at the last minute or leave out if you want the scroggan to keep) • honey loops or Cheerios (ditto)
…plus anything else you fancy, although it’s best to avoid really sticky or crumbly items, as they just make a mess of everything else.

Main Meal

Spanish Omelette

This tasty dish turns out like a quiche with no base – it’s good with fresh or dried ingredients, or a mixture of both.

Serves 2
Pans: 1 large frying pan or wok (non-stick makes life much easier)
Stoves: 1
Campfire: yes
Other equipment: bowl or spare pan for mixing, sharp knife and chopping board or plate, fork for whisking, spatula
Prep time: 20 minutes
Pack weight: about 100–150g per person, depending on use of fresh         versus dry ingredients
Fuel efficiency: good
Vegetarian
 

• 6 fresh eggs or 12 heaped spoonfuls egg powder and 1⁄3 mugful (125ml) water • 1⁄3 mug (125ml) milk or 2 heaped spoonfuls milk powder and 1⁄3 mug (125ml) water • 1 large potato or 1⁄2 mug (75g) potato flakes made up to a stiff mash with a little water • 2 large tomatoes or 4 sundried tomatoes • 1 green pepper or a small handful dried pepper • 1 onion or a small handful dried onion • handful flour • oil • salt and pepper • optional: cheese, leftover cooked vegetables
 

If using fresh potato, slice it thinly and cook in boiling water for about 10 minutes or until tender. If using potato flakes, make up a thick mash with hot water. Chop the fresh vegetables finely. Soak any dehydrated vegetables in warm water for five minutes. Whisk up the eggs, milk and flour in a pan or bowl.

Heat the oil in a frying pan or camp wok and pour in half the egg mixture. After about 30 seconds, add all the vegetables, including the cooked potato and cheese if using, and season well with salt and pepper. Tip the remaining egg mixture over the top. Cook over a low heat until all the egg has solidified. Slice and serve.