Welcome!

Welcome to my wee blog, a place to share UK camping recipes.

Just because you're away from home is no reason to live on just beans and instant noodles. In fact if you are just eating beans and instant noodles you'll either be keen to get back home or be put off camping for life.

I love walking and particularly lightweight backpacking - basically carrying all you need for a 3-4 day walk, including equipment and all supplies except water, but with the absolute minimum of total weight.

This doesn't mean, however, that you should compromise on comfort or good food. As the great Alan Whicker said 'any fool can be uncomfortable'. Similarly any fool can eat boring dull food while out on the trail. I just read on another blog from 'over there' a recipe for spam and noodles. Life is far too short to eat dross like that. Even stuck in tin can in space they do better than that!

Food is more than just fuel, it's a great motivator, something to look forward to as you trudge the final miles or something to savour gazing at a perfect view at the end of a perfect day. Eat well, sleep well and you'll approach the next day's camping with a spring in your step.

Commercially available specialist foods for camping are universally disgusting. Bar none. At all.
There are dehydrated meals in plastic packets that you 'cook' and ambient meals in foil pouches that you just heat up. All the ones I've tried put me in mind of school dinners on a really, really bad day. actually that's unfair. Our dinners were never that bad and I went to a 19th century school.

There are some non-camping ambient meals that are actually nice - the Look What We Found range (http://www.lookwhatwefound.co.uk/) are excellent but as they're not dehydrated they're heavy. As a treat for a one night camp they have a place but they're not feasible for a multi-day backpacking trip - unless you have a Sherpa.

We eat good food at home so why should it be any different outdoors? The answer clearly is to cook and dehydrate food especially for camping trips

I searched on the 'net for camping recipes and was suprised how few there were and how poor the recipes were. Too many other blogs concentrate on US recipes which just make no sense to us metric (ish) and gastronome Brits.

These are recipes I've developed and used - they work!
I hope you'll comment on them & suggest tweaks and improvements.

If you have a recipe you want to share then e-mail it to me at rogthedodge@hotmail.com and be sure to include your details so you get the glory / blame for your contribution