Winter Camping Food Tips

 Winter Camping Food Tips - Part One

First rule to remember is that while winter camping, you need to pack and eat a lot of food. It is estimated that your body requires at least 4,500 calories each day because of the extra energy needed to keep your body warm. Depending on your health, body metabolism, age, and sex over 5,000 calories may be burned. Paradoxically, your appetite may be less due to these same winter factors.
You may need to encourage yourself and those in your care to eat. The best way to do that is to plan an appealing menu. So let’s talk about what to pack.

You generally want to stay away from fresh food in the winter. Fresh foods such as fruit and vegetables contain water and will freeze. Dairy product such as cheese and butter are okay.

For breakfast, keep it simple. It may be hard enough to get out of your sleeping bag and you’ll want to get warm quick. Instant oatmeal or granola in hot milk is an easy choice. Hot milk can be made easily by mixing hot water and dry or powdered milk. Throwing in some margerine, will enable you to sneak some extra fat calories into the bodies of any children who may have trouble eating enough food to reach the higher caloric total needed.

Eggs (which may freeze) and pancakes get cold very quickly and generally lose their taste and appeal when cold. However bacon is still a possibility and a great source of protein. It can also be used later in the day for sandwiches or snacks. To cook bagels or english muffins, simply melt butter in a pan and toss in your bread!

Be very careful with coffee on your camping trip. Because caffeine is a diuretic, you’ll lose water which can lead to dehydration and possibly hypothermia. If you still must have coffee, go for decaf.
Please see tomorrow’s post for lunch and dinner trips plus more!

Winter Camping Food Tips - Part 2

For lunch, a mix of foods work well. Some foods you may want to include dried fruit, raisins, granola bars, trail mix, meats, nuts, cheese, and even some cookies and candy including chocolates. I’ve found that pepperoni and cheese on crackers is always popular.

You can prepare this ahead of time and provide each person with a personal lunch they can snack on throughout the day. You’ll want to cube or slice the cheese ahead of time so you’re not biting into a big frozen chunk.

The meats can come from lunch meat or any leftover breakfast bacon. Peanut butter on crackers or a bagel sandwich (lunch meat or peanut butter) will provide you with some protein, fats, and carbohydrates. If you are staying at your camp, as opposed to going on a hike, you could actually do some cooking and have a hot meal.

This will provide the campers with a rest period however make sure to keep everyone warm during this time as people may get cold if they just lull around camp for too long. If you want to go with a hot meal, take a look at the simpler dinner ideas such as soup as supplement additional food as needed.

It can be rather simple to cook a good dinner that will serve a lot of people by making a stew. Begin with some base soup or gravy and add in some carbohydrate starches such as noodles or rice. Then throw in some frozen vegetables such as green beans along with some meat for protein. The meat can be canned tuna or fish or maybe even your deli meat. Cheese can be added as well. Don’t forget the seasonings so your dinner is not bland.

One dinner option is to use freeze dried foods which you only need to boil in water. They also weigh less so they are easy to carry into camp. Less effort is needed to cook them and that is a bonus too. However cost, as compared to rice and noodles, is relatively higher so make sure you shop around.

Also take a close look at the serving sizes listed and then think if that would really fill a person as sometimes companies overestimate how many people each meal pack serves. if you go this route, order extra if you are unsure as consuming enough food is crucial in winter camping.

Winter Camping Food Tips - Part Three

Due to the cold temperature, it’s hard to keep your frying pan warm enough to brown your hamburg. Thus cooking meat can be tricky in the winter. Pepperoni and deli meat can provide you with necessary protein.

Instant soups and stews are quick and easy to make and come in lots of flavors to satisfy everyone. You can even use your insulated mug to eat or drink the soup out of.

Pasta for supper works well. Using ziplocks, drop in a bag of frozen spaghetti into your pot with boiling water and wait for it to thaw. Follow dinner with a hot drink and can consist of hot chocolate, tea, tang, or jello. Yes jello - it can make a sweet hot drink - just mix hot water with jellow packets.

In the winter, all you need in your personal mess kit is a big insulated plastic cup along with a plastic spoon. You can clean them after eating, by scraping out the leftovers with snow. This may be obvious to some, but don’t bring alone metal utensils while winter camping.

Aluminum foil as usual will prove its worth especially for packing. You can wrap your breakfast bagel sandwiches in individual servings ahead of time. Wrap up your bacon by meal in foil and just throw on the coals.