Well, I took a little unexpected blogging break last week. My sister was in-town with my niece and nephew and I was hustling back and forth between work and home and farm chores (we got the shearing done–yea!!) and trying to see fireworks and go to the park and enjoy “Ciocia’s famous fried chicken”…and computer time was just waaay down on the list. {smile} It was busy but glorious. (And I managed to throw some pictures up on Facebook through the week!)

In the meantime, here’s the post I meant to share last week about our camping menu! (Be sure to check out The Overview post about our trip.)

Water is, of course, the most important thing when packing your camping gear (although the Ladybug and I think toilet paper comes a close second!) and, as I’ve mentioned before, we got some great starter advice from the staff at our local outfitter.

The munchkins each have a 0.75L Camelbak water bottle and Mr. Fix-It and I each have a 32 oz (1 L) Nalgene water bottle.  Mr. Fix-It also carried a 6L Dromedary water bladder. Penny also carried 2 liters of water for herself in her backpack — and next time she’ll be carrying twice as much water and half as much food!

We each drank about 2L of water per day, and that was without any heavy hiking–so we were pretty much out of water when we were heading home. This was an important part of our “test run” trip because water is very heavy when you’re packing everything on your back–but kinda critical as well. We’ll be adding another water bladder (either the 6L or a 10L) before we take a longer trip. We’re also researching water purification systems–so if you’ve got any advice I’d love to hear it!

By the way, we also went with the Dromedary water bladder on the recommendations from our outfitter because it’s thicker and tougher, has that great 3-way cap, and the grommet edging makes it easy to strap on or hang. We found all of those features to be awesome and our second one will be the same.

Food was the other biggie we got a lot of advice on. Everyone we talked to said that if you want your children to enjoy it–you need to have food they’ll like. So, once again, our “test run” was a trial of a couple different things and we packed lots of snacks. Lots of snacks.

The main lesson? Again–twice as much water, half as much food next time!

I’m not sure if it was the heat or what, but the kids were not starving like I expected. We also made a conscious decision to have a campfire on our first outing instead of using our little stove because we thought the kiddos would enjoy that more the first couple times, so we packed a campfire meal for dinner and s’mores–all extra weight we’d probably skip on a longer trip. We also tried to include the crew in some menu decisions, which didn’t really go as well as we’d hoped. But I think that was because they didn’t really have any idea what to expect. Their “camping” experiences had all been more along the lines of a picnic or cook-out.

I carried most of our food, so it was all packed together and I sorted each “meal” into 1 gallon Ziploc bags.

Here’s our menu with some notes for next time…

{BTW–we got our food from the grocery store. In the case of the foods below, I linked to Amazon to share the product with you, but I’ve never purchased food from them before. Please see my Disclosure page for more information.}

Saturday AM Snack: Cereal bars & Trail mix

{It’s nice that cereal bars are pre-portioned, but they include more trash than a shared bag of trail mix. Next time I would pick just one and definitely go for something without any kind of chocolate to melt!}

Saturday Lunch: Crackers with peanut butter or tuna, bananas or apples, Crystal Light drink mix

{We discovered and now LOVE Jif To-Go packs–perfect size for one snack/meal! We also tried the 3oz  Tuna Salad pouchesand thought they were perfect as well. Next time I’ll be hunting for something to use for packing that will protect our crackers better, but trash and weight are still always an issue. We wanted to just do apples, but the Ladybug can’t eat whole apples with her orthodontics, thus a couple of bananas. The fruit ended up not getting eaten until later anyway.}

Saturday PM Snack: Trail mix

{Everyone had a bite or two and then ate their fruit from earlier.}

Saturday Dinner: Kielbasa hobo packs

{Kielbasa, corn, carrots, diced potatoes, onions, sautéed together at home and packed in foil to re-heat over the campfire. Kiddos only ate half of what was packed, but Mr. Fix-It finished all the leftovers off. We want to try freeze-dried meals because hobo packs are waaay to heavy for a long trip, but I’m not sure they’ll work with Speedracer–he’s picky.}

Saturday Dessert: S’mores

{Seriously, not worth the mess–plus we only had one each and apparently I thought I was packing for a s’more-hungry army! Next time we’ll just pack a few cookies.}

Sunday Breakfast: Pop Tarts

{Worked out fine, but I would rather have had something more healthy. This was one of the kid-picks.}

Sunday AM Snack: Cereal Bars

{Again, nice to pack, but sticky and extra trash.}

Sunday Lunch: HOME

Next time…

• We’ll let the munchkins have an “emergency” cereal bar in their packs and otherwise we’ll munch on trail mix (without chocolate!) for snacks.
• We’ll bring dried fruit instead of fresh fruit. (And we’re going to try making our own!)
• No chocolate in anything! {smile} We’ll just bring some cookies for desserts.
• I would only add flavor to one water bottle and everyone can share that one at a meal, so we don’t waste water we might want for something else.
• We have to figure something out for some coffee in the morning!! {smile}

Have any great tips to share? I’ve got a Camping and Backpacking board over on Pinterest if you’ve got a great post to share!

Tomorrow I’ll be posting about learning opportunities when you’re off the beaten path, and I’ll be posting more packing tips later this week.

What family adventures have you been on lately?