Camping Food Checklist

Take the stress out of what food to pack on your next camping trip, with this Camping Food Checklist!  And while you’re here grab some camping recipe ideas too!

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We love to camp.  It’s just a great way to spend time with family, explore the world and enjoy the great outdoors!  We’re not expert campers, but over the years we’ve managed to find a system that works for us, and we can get packed for our trips pretty quickly.  But one of the areas that I still find most challenging is meal planning, so over time I’ve kept a list in my notebook of all the food items I like to pack.  And since you might find it useful as well, I thought I’d share it!

The best thing to remember about packing food for camping is to try to keep it simple.  I know the list looks long, but you don’t have to take everything if you’re only going away for just a couple of days.  This list works really well if you’re camping for a week or more at a time.  The key is to just create a menu and plan accordingly.

If you want to print this list, just drag it to your desktop and print from there.

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Now what to do with all that food?  Here are some tips & tricks we have learned:

Tips & Tricks!

• Use wraps for lunches, and roll up sandwich meat and cream cheese, or stuff them with left over rice or quinoa, veggies and meat.  Or roll them up with peanut butter, jam and bananas for breakfast.  Wraps are great to pack for hikes and car traveling!
• Use the English muffins for egg breakfast sandwiches.
• For lunch make sandwiches (or bunwiches) with the tuna, or cream cheese, or sandwich meat.  Good old fashioned peanut butter and jelly is great too!
• Used leftover cooked quinoa or noodles to make salads for lunch.
• We used to brew our coffee when camping, but we don’t anymore.  We discovered the instant coffee from Starbucks and it’s so delicious.  And easy.  SO easy.
• We like to keep a stash of quick access snacks for the kids when we’re traveling.  We fill a cooler with cheese strings, yogurts, muffins, granola bars, juice boxes and water.
• We make a lot of tin foil packet side dishes and desserts:  potato packets, root vegetable packets, dessert crisps.
• One dish dinners are great:  meat and vegetables in one pot cooked over the campfire.
• Bottled water is handy, but so wasteful.  We like to bring a large container of water and re-useable water bottles from home and refill as needed.
• Seasoned salt is your best camping friend.  You can add it to anything and it makes everything delicious.  No need to get fancy when camping!
• Pre-made packaged hash browns are so great for camping.  Use them for breakfast or a side dish at dinner.

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As well, here are 15 Easy & Delicious Camping Recipes that you can make with all the ingredients that I listed on the Camping Food Checklist!  Cooking while camping doesn’t have to be stressful…if you’ve got a plan and a menu, you’re set!

Do you have anything you’d like to add to the list?  Let me know in the comments if I’ve missed something!

Happy camping!