Camping to Glamping... How bout Gormamping??

Hello to all my cookmyway readers. You haven’t heard from me in a while as I’ve been hiding in the sun and camping hillside on the beautiful beaches of the south coast. Due to minimal Internet but the small-screened updates on my phone, not to mention the amount of time wasted doing absolutely nothing but salivating in all the suns rays, I haven’t had a chance to write about much at all. So I begin the New Year with something close to my heart: The bounty of food that comes with camping.

Peppered throughout all my childhood memories are fragmented images of campsite cooking. Be it a BBQ to the traditional curry night where everyone makes something different, my memory does not exhaust in commemorating these images where food and people are so alive. The food of camping is under-rated so here I give you an exclusive look into how the other lives. That is the camper.

Now you may be thinking, how ‘gourmet’ can you be when you’re cooking in a canvas-wall-metal-pole-raised-house-like ensemble. Already you’re without fridges, electricity and therefore all other forms of cheat means. But don’t worry its not too stone age.

I think you would be pleasantly surprised with my lot. We’re the keen campers; the kitchen takes high priority in the assembling of the tent space. It has a gas stove and hot plate, a milk crate raised pantry to display all the dry goods, a fibreglass esky that keeps everything freezing cold (sometimes even freezes the milk!) and a great set of knives that seem to be sharper then the ones back at home. Everything you need to whip up some crazy tasty meals is under a 10 by 10-raised roof.

Our holidays have been spent down the coast for many years, 20+ in fact. The people we spend our time with have become family, and with that come family recipes. It’s become tradition to give a theme to each unique camping dinner experience.

We have lamb night; where a huge piece of lamb is cooked on a Webber for hours and served in wraps with home made taztziki and salad all coming from various tents.

There’s curry night; where everyone brings their own unique curry and one poor tent is in charge of rice for all!

There’s fish night on the off chance that the dads finally catch some fish!

There’s pasta night; where every shape of pasta gets its turn on the table.

And then there’s ‘What are you having for dinner’ night; where whatever your having is shared around a huge table, making it more or less an excuse to get rid of some of the many bottles of wine brought from home.

Camping life is simple, that is when you’ve got the friends to make up for the many mouths you have to feed. But more importantly camping makes food social. With no TVs to run off to, camping life is all about eating drinking and laughing. Food is used to bring together all the campers in the park, and without it we probably wouldn’t have the friends we have today as we pilfered them with 3 o’clock nibbles. That’s right I said 3 we like to start early.

Food makes camping fun, and brings hope to a rained out wet and soaked camper. So I’d like to say thankyou; to food. I’m not sure if this has been done before, or if it’s normal to say thankyou to something that can’t really show its gratitude. But regardless, thankyou food for filling my summers with some of the best memories I’ve ever had.
You did good food. You did good.
You made me one happy camper.

By Samantha Coutts.