Camping + Food

I just got back from camping on Vancouver Island and it was beautiful and fun! But I will bypass the beautiful and the fun part and talk about the food. My camping companions were all non-vegans, so they told me in advance what they had planned to make/eat on the trip and I armed myself so that I wouldn’t feel like I was missing out on any of it. It was agonizing having to decide what to take only because there were so many possibilities! I wish I could make a fire in my backyard and pretend I’m camping just so I can try all the camp foods that I wanted to try. Those people who think vegans have a limited diet, they are crazy.

I went a little overboard with the food-making and ended up with enough to feed four Angelas, but that is okay because now I don’t have to cook for the rest of the week. For pre-made things, I brought vegan marshmallows (which I had ordered online from Pangea and miraculously arrived at the very very last minute, making me appreciate them that much more) and tofurky sausages for roasting over the fire (because I prefer them to veggie dogs any day). For homemade things I brought raw vegetables and almond-red-pepper hummus, potato salad, balsamico roasted vegetables for roasting over the fire, kering tempe, pancake mix, hazelnut fig granola, apples and pears, and Nanaimo bars (because I’m a dork and liked the idea of eating Nanaimo bars in Nanaimo).


Here I must admit that this was definitely car-camping and not back-woods camping. We had running water nearby and there was a truck that came around selling firewood fairly regularly. But it was still fun, and a nice break. My companions even brought a can of whipped cream for putting on their homemade crepes for breakfast on the first morning. I, meanwhile, enjoyed my sunny seedy orange pancakes (I prepared the wet and dry ingredients separately and then combined them along with the OJ right before frying) with chopped strawberries and maple syrup.


Everyone loved the potato salad.


Roasting the vegetables was a fun time. I had prepared them in their marinade and wrapped them in tinfoil and put in ziplock baggies before I left. Once the fire got going and a bed of coals built up, we put the tinfoil bundles on the coals and then put wood on top to seal in the heat (and thus I learned how the first oven originated :P). They took slightly less time to cook than in my home oven.


The Nanaimo bars also went over really well, but sorry, no photos ☹.

Other things we made (everyone) were: fire-roasted baby potatoes, asparagus and zucchini (with simply oil, salt and pepper to season), and banana boats (banana stuffed with marshmallows and chocolate bits). And there were of course roasted plain marshmallows, roasted tofurky sausages, and lots of camp coffee (the first time I’ve had coffee in a long while – a rare indulgence). Mmmm, camp food…