I learned a lot about cooking on our recent trip to Yosemite.¬† The first thing I learned was that fruit doesn’t travel well to the Sierras.¬† Hard fruit, like apples or oranges, maybe green-ish bananas – but if you’re doing tent camping, not backpacking, not in a camper or a winnebego or pull-out trailer, you’ll have to put your food in either a cooler or in the bear locker.¬† If it goes in the bear locker it bakes all day long in the hot sun.¬† If it goes in the cooler it sits in cool water for a lengthy period of time.¬† Peaches, apricots, cherries were rotten by the third day.¬† It’s tempting to get them but think about storing them.¬† The other thing is, you don’t do a lot of snacking – you eat three meals and that’s pretty much it.¬† If the meals are filling you won’t need anything more.
Here is one dish I cooked – a chicken dish with some sort of Indian sauce, like a korma or something – I don’t even remember.¬† I sauteed onions and garlic before simmering the potatoes, carrots and chicken in the sauce.
The kitchen situation and the bear locker.  And that pineapple was toast by the third day:
Our sleeping arrangements on the first night (we had a great site – the next day we had to move to a more crowded, less pretty site for the remainder of our stay – you can’t have everything!
Here is our second location kitchen set-up (photo by our friend from Florida, Robert) – the pancake batter is just waiting to spill over, ain’t it?
The bottom line here is that if you’re cooking for others, especially a kid, you have to think about what you’ll be doing and when.¬† Having a lot of extra fruit around is a waste of money and, like they say in The Edge, what do we die of if we’re stuck in the wilderness?¬† We die of shame.¬† Shame that one doesn’t have the smarts to plan ahead and thus one buys a ton of fruit that then ripens and rots.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4-M__xOtv0[/youtube]
Of course, if you’re actually “camping,” as in – it’s just you, a burner, a sleeping bag, a small tent and the great wide open you’re going to need a lot less.¬† Doing the 1950′s style of tent camping, however, requires planning.¬† When I was a kid my sister and I took camping trips every summer with the Birdsalls.¬† They had the camping thing down.¬† I will always be amazed at people who do things well, whether it’s something small like keeping the kitchen floor clean, or something big, like planning a camping trip with lots of kids along and having it all go off without a hitch.¬† I’ll never be that person.
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