This past weekend we we camping with friends who had never been camping before and who had never been down to Everglades National Park before. I wanted to make sure they ate well on the trip because A) I like to eat well when camping, B) I like showing people it doesn’t always have to be a pack of hot dogs cooked on a stick, and C) I wanted to convince them camping was fun and they should do it again.

As you might remember from the Crockpot Edition, or the Butane Cook Stove edition, I’m a big fan of instant or minute rice while camping. At home, not so much, but when camping nothing is more of a pain to get working right than simmering rice with a propane or butane stove, and after a full day of adventuring, no one wants to wait around for regular rice to cook either.

So, into the Everglades, I brought:

• Instant brown rice
• Tofurkey beer brats
• Two Tofurkey Italtian sausages
• An eggplant
• A couple of zucchini
• A couple of yellow squash
• Two tomatoes (from Robert Is Here — awesome fruit and veggie stand!)
• Two avocados
• A tube of Gimmie Lean sausage
• A pack of Tofurkey maple tempeh “bacon”
• A bag of red potatoes
• Red and Green bell peppers
• A couple of white onions
• Coconut oil
• Rice vinegar
• “Veggie” Pepper (blend of various ground peppers)
• Garlic and Herb seasoning
• Creole seasoning
• Cayenne
• A bag of hot dog buns
• Six eggs
• (and way too many snacks)

For dinner, I cooked the rice in an aluminum foil cake pan by boiling water, adding the rice and garlic-herb seasoning and covering with foil sitting on the picnic table. In another cake pan, I sauteed some chopped onion in coconut oil, added some sliced Tofurkey Italian sausages and set that aside to stir into the rice when cooked. While I did this, I sliced the eggplant and grilled it around the edges of the cake pan. I put the slices on a plate with some creole seasoning and a splash of rice vinegar. In the pan I used for the onion and sausage, I added a tad more oil and the cut up veggies with some more onion and a bit of the creole seasoning. While that cooked, I grilled the brats around the edges and while we set the picnic table, I tossed the buns on to lightly toast them.

For breakfast, I sliced onion and the potatoes, and cooked them in the coconut oil in another cake pan and some creole seasoning and cayenne to be spicy diner-style potatoes. Then, I cut up the Gimmie lean and cooked it with coconut oil until brown, and did the same with the tempeh. The eggs, I cooked in the same pan (I only brought three) by stirring them all together with onion scrambled style.  Breakfast was served with fresh avocado and tomato slices.

 

I may have overfed them, but… they’re already looking to book the next adventure. (And, I converted the carnivores for the weekend!)