I remember learning to make foil camp packets at a kids camp. The recipe was simple: a handful of cut up veg, a potato cut into cubes, ¼ pound of beef, half a bouillon cube, and a pat of butter in a foil pouch (with some ground pepper). We cooked it over a fire until it smelled lovely.
That first pouch I made was so flavourful. The beef and potatoes browned and were crunchy, and the veg tasted like the rest of the pack. I don’t think I realised it at the time, but I had a whiff of what simple pleasure food could be.
I don’t think my childhood kitchen ever had bouillon, and ground beef was something that was boiled for hours so that it was safe to eat, and I don’t remember making camp pouches until I had my own kids.
We went camping at least a few times when I was younger. In the early days, we had an old, musty canvas tent that we spent as little time as possible in. Later, we bought a tent trailer that was also musty, but we would open it up in our backyard every year to air it out, so it was much nicer to spend time in.
Oddly, I don’t remember much about what we ate when we were camping. I do remember that my dad had a hibachi and a butane camp stove. I’m pretty sure the hibachi was used mostly to make hotdogs, which I likely ate plain on a white fluffy bun. This is how we ate them in grade school, and I had no idea that hotdogs had condiments until I was an adult.
I suspect that the camp stove was used to make pancakes and percolated coffee, though I mostly remember eating those tiny boxes of cereal, which opened up into an awkward bowl. I would always fight for my favourite cereals, which were corn flakes and rice crispies. I never understood why people ate fruit loops or cheerios, neither of which tasted like much.
Camping in my childhood was mostly about what we did and not what we ate; time at the lake, playing with cousins, and generally avoiding the adults. There was food, but it was simple, and mostly perfunctory and frugal.
As an adult, camping evolved into something more equally about the food and the fun, and we have a long list of camp favourites that we make every year we get up to the family lake property. The foods we made evolved over the years, but my best memory is in developing menus that would make the family happy, with some nostalgia, and something new. I also have fond memories of buying groceries for camping, where we always bought more than we needed.