Camping and Food Restrictions

I just got back from my annual camping trip to Baxter State Park, and as is often the case, it got me thinking a lot about food. That tends to happen when you have to pack all the food you might need for a few days at once while knowing you won’t have easy access to a store.

I don’t only think about the amount of food, though. I also have to consider what types of food to bring since my friends and I all have food restrictions. This means we can’t always have what might be considered “typical” camping food, and we have to plan our meals around what we can and can’t eat.

Common camping foods that we find problematic

From a brief look online, everyone has their own take on what’s considered a good camping meal. But here are some of the items that came up and why they’re problematic for us.

• S’mores: Most people probably agree that s’mores are quintessential camping food, and we do have them, but with gluten-free graham crackers since all of us avoid gluten.

• Pancakes: We don’t have these, but if we did, again, they’d have to be gluten-free.

• Eggs of various kinds (hard-boiled, scrambled, over easy, etc.): my two friends do have eggs with breakfast on our second morning, but since I have a mild allergy to eggs (not life-threatening but still annoying), I skip that.

• Hot dogs or sausage: One of my friends had heart surgery several years ago, and since then, he’s had to be extremely careful of his sodium intake. Hot dogs and sausage are often high in sodium, although after some hunting, my friends found some low-sodium sausage, which we now use.

• Almonds: One of my friends is allergic to almonds, so she can’t have those as a snack or in trail mix, though happily I can.

• Bananas and chocolate heated in tinfoil: One of my friends is also allergic to bananas, and it seems I have a slight allergy to them as well, so we skip that.

• Rice: My friends often have rice with chicken on our last night, but I have to skip the rice due to an allergy.

• Cheese sticks or cheese wheels: Having too much dairy makes me congested, and sneezing and having a runny nose while camping isn’t much fun, so I avoid these.

What we eat

That may all make it sound like there’s almost nothing we can eat, but that’s not true. We have a good routine at this point that includes the following.

For breakfast, oatmeal works well for all of us, as do potatoes and the low-sodium sausage. I also like to have some fruit with breakfast, maybe an apple or some grapes.

Lunch depends on whether we’re at the campsite or hiking. If we’re at the campsite, we might have sandwiches with gluten-free wraps, chips, and cookies. My friends have also experimented with dehydrated soups, and we’ll sometimes have one of those – they’ve got some pretty good mixes.

If we’re hiking during lunch, we all bring whatever works for us individually. I have trail mix, plus some pepperoni, grapes, plenty of water, and this year I experimented with bringing a tuna pouch. That worked pretty well, so I might do it again.

We have a set menu for dinners. One night is burgers, although without a bun because gluten-free buns aren’t that great, and we usually have chips and salad with that. Another night is tacos with corn tortillas, and the last night is black mustard chicken. As I noted before, my friends often have rice with the chicken, and I’ll bring cornbread for myself, as well as some veggies.

For dessert, if the weather cooperates to make a fire, we’ll have s’mores one night, with the gluten-free graham crackers, and they’re pretty good. That’s assuming we can get the marshmallows toasted just right, which doesn’t always happen, as you can see from this photo.

Me with overly toasted marshmallow

This year, I also brought coffee cake and peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (both gluten-free), and my friends made bars with similar ingredients to the cookies.

Still plenty of options

With all our various food restrictions, it may seem like it would be hard for me and my friends to figure out what to eat while camping, but we still have quite a few options. Those options may not be the most appealing to everyone, and that’s okay. They work for us, and having food that doesn’t cause us problems allows us to enjoy the camping trip.