What's good vegetarian camping food?

1. 66

   ThompsonPenposted 11 years ago

   What's good vegetarian camping food?
   
   What's some good food to bring with you that's vegetarian and not veggie burgers or hot dogs?

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2. 55

   Shea ONealposted 11 years ago

   Recently, I have become a vegetarian in a effort to turn my very poor precancerous health around. I have been following a modified version of the Gerson diet. I juice greens, apples, and carrots 3 times a day. I eat oatmeal for breakfast. Lunch and dinner usually consist of grilled veggies. So when my parents asked me to join them on a 10 day camping trip I began scrambling to figure out how I would be able to maintain my very strict, very specialized diet. I am happy to say that I was able to keep my diet while enjoying our camping trip. Listed below are some helpful hints. 1. Buy a good cooler that you can carry for day trips. 2. Juice or wash and cut your veggies before you go camping. (Note: Some veggies cannot be cut in advance but most can this will save you lots of time and clean up)You will need a 2nd cooler to keep them in. Most will last about 3-5 days. You will lose some of the nutritional value in the juices but not all. Keep them iced until you are ready to drink or cook them. 3. I ate a lot of nuts, power bars, raw fruits, raw veggies, and canned beans. V-8 juices are good as well. There are some preprocessed foods that you can eat on a vegetarian diet that prove very helpful when camping. I also used organic baby food pouches in place of juicing when we did some hiking. They don't need to be refriderated and they provide good nutrition. Two of them paired with nuts and a power bar filled me up for lunch on day trips.  4. Don't forget veggie wraps. You can roast veggies over an open flame on shish K bobs and put them in a veggie wrap for a wonderful meal. 5. If you have electrical hook ups (even in a tent) buy a small dorm size fridge to keep fruits and veggies in to lengthen their life span. 6. Water is a must. I was able to keep unchilled water at the campsite at all times. I figured out that it worked best to plan the next days meals for our hiking and day trips the night before. I included chilling water in the small cooler with my juice and raw fruits or veggies. If I had left over cooked veggies I put them in zip lock bags in a back pack the in the mornings before we left for the day. There are many ways you can do this. A lot depends on the kind of camping you will be doing. I have also taken my juicer along for fresh juicing but I found that clean up is difficult. However, it can be done so long as you have a good water source and a clothes line to hang washrags on. My best suggestion is know your invornment and adjust accordingly.

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3. 84

   JoeYoung22posted 11 years ago

   Assuming you mean campsite camping, where you have access to shops, I would go for pasta and rice dishes. Spaghetti in a simple tomato, garlic and chilli sauce can be done on the single hob of a camping stove (cook the pasta, put to one side, and then make the sauce in the same pan). It's not haute cuisine, but it's tasty and filling. I've also done mac and cheese outdoors, and it was fine. Any sauce that has to simmer, curry, chilli etc, is perfectly suited to camp stove cooking.
   
   As long as you have sufficient gas, there's no limit to what you can cook. Egg and stir fry dishes work well, and I once made risotto outside my tent. Boil the kettle to make stock then add oil to a saucepan. Sautee garlic, onion and mushrooms. Add arborio rice and stir. Pour in a good glug of wine and allow to reduce. Add stock gradually, and stir until it is creamy and the rice cooked. Stir in a handful of vegetarian parmesan style cheese and let it rest a few minutes. Serve with more cheese and the rest of the wine. Simple and delicious.
   
   The only dishes I would steer clear from are those that require dried beans. These need soaking and then boiling for ages, so are not suited to campsite cooking.
   
   If you mean rucksack camping, where everything must be carried, then it's dreid noodles all the way.

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   1. 66

      ThompsonPenposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      These are awesome suggestions, but aye, we're after rucksack camping. Thanks for your input!

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4. 40

   ChristinSposted 11 years ago

   But veggie dogs can be fun! We went camping one year and had the veggie dogs for the kids to roast stored in the cooler. In the middle of the night we hear what sounds like a huge animal knocking around our camp site. We are all scared and we look out the little tent window and there is a raccoon the size of a dog going through our cooler! Smart buggers they are, he figured out how to open the lid and go through it.  He gets to a veggie dog takes a bite, throws it down and walks away lol. So pack the veggie dogs to protect the good stuff like fresh fruit (peaches are amazing right out of the cooler) granola, tofu jerky (make it yourself in a dehydrator) veggie chips, cut up veggies with dressing, etc.

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5. 61

   craftybegoniaposted 11 years ago

   You can bake sweet potatoes and have them with those veggie dogs.

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6. 83

   M. T. Dremerposted 11 years ago

   Corn on the cob for sure as well as potatoes. If you assemble vegetable cabobs before hand, you can wrap them in foil and cook them over a fire. Beans and vegetable soups can be made on camper stoves and fire pots. And some variation of gorp would work for snacks. I have no idea what could replace smores though. I'm still working on that one.

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