Dinner - Car Camping - Camper’s Taco Pie

Camper’s Taco Pie

This recipe uses a Dutch Oven in the fire but could also be made as a “hobo pack” in the fire.

Ingredients

1 Lb of ground beef (could use turkey or just vegetables)
Small onion
Small green pepper
1 can of corn
1 can of black beans
2 cans of Rotel (canned tomatoes with chili peppers)
Grated Cheese

Enchilada Sauce: Can take a packet of McCormick’s with you and make at the camp site with water and a can of tomato paste or make your own enchilada sauce.
My Sauce: One 12 ounce can of tomato paste, one packet of McCormick chili mix, one can of milk (12 ounce can from tomato paste) and one can of Portobello Mushroom Soup by Imagine (12 ounce can from tomato paste) This makes a very thick enchilada sauce.

1 package of soft corn tortillas (make sure that they are GF) I use La Banderita

Assemble the Pie

1. Cook the ground beef, onions and green peppers together before you leave on your camping trip. Freeze in a zip lock back and the packet will thaw as you are driving to your camping location.
2. Open the corn, black beans and rotel and mix together
3. I make my enchilada sauce at home and keep in a cooler but you can quickly mix-up the McCormick sauce at the camp site
4. Put a thin layer of sauce on the bottom of the Dutch oven to keep the first layer of corn tortillas from sticking. (same for hobo packet)
5. Layer a corn tortilla, veggie mix and meat mix and cheese as if you are making lasagna. End the “stack” with a tortilla, sauce and then cheese
6. Put the lid on the Dutch oven and place in hot coals with hot coals on top of oven. (or close up your hobo packet by wrapping it in an extra layer of heavy-duty foil)
7. Since the meat is already cooked, you are really just heating the pie up at the camp site. I have even eaten this cold the next day. Also the un-used corn tortillas make a great snack with a can of re-fried beans, salsa and cheese the next day—or for breakfast as egg wraps.

Note: The pie will heat up very fast as a hobo packet. I suggest placing the packets on a grate over the fire and not directly in the fire.

Thanks, Kim Chappell, for submitting this recipe and photo! It looks great! Maybe we'll try it veggie hobo style ;-)

On The Road - Greek-Style Pasta Salad

Ingredients: (8 servings)
1 package of your favorite GF pasta (cooked and cooled beforehand)
1-2 small chicken breasts (marinated in Italian dressing and cooked separately)
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup red wine vinegar
1 large cucumber (peeled and quartered)
½ cup red onion (chopped or slivered)
2-3 tomatoes (if desired – but these don’t stay fresh as long)
1 cup crumbled feta cheese (check to make sure it’s gluten-free)
½ tsp salt
1 tsp dried oregano
Parsley (fresh or dried)
Baby spinach leaves (if desired)
Boiled eggs

Preparation:
Cook the pasta in lightly salted water (until al dente) and drain.
In a large bowl, mix the olive oil, lemon juice, red wine vinegar, parsley, oregano, and salt. Add the pasta and toss to coat. Cover, and chill for a couple of hours in the refrigerator. In the meantime, marinate the chicken in Italian dressing and then bake it at 350 degrees. When cooled, slice it up and later add it to the salad. You could also grill the chicken.
Boil eggs in a separate sauce pan and allow them to cool. Then peel and quarter.
Add the onion, cucumber, feta cheese, tomatoes and fresh spinach to the pasta. Arrange the quartered eggs around the salad to serve or leave them whole if you want to take the salad with you.

Note - The pasta is bionaturae Organic Gluten Free fusilli made with rice, potato and soy. We bought it at Whole Foods recently and tried it for the first time - we like it.

Dinner - Car Camping - Hobo Stew

Contributed by my friend Autumn on Facebook - Thanks Autumn! :-) It sounds great!

If anyone makes this recipe, feel free to email me the photo so I can post it here!

"Ok...so you take a large piece of aluminum foil and spread it out on a table.
First put a large slice of onion down.
A tab of butter or some oil.
Then a hamburger patty seasoned with favorite seasonings
Add thin sliced potatoes, mushrooms, peppers, or what ever you like for vegetables.
Top with more seasonings and a tab of butter or some oil.
Seal the foil around the pile of food and place over coals on rack or rock near coals or on grill. Cook for approx 20-30 min...until all veggies are tender and meat is cooked.My husband and I have cooked this on our BBQ for a quick dinner too!
Have a great day!!
~Autumn"

GF note - Please make sure that the hamburger is gluten-free
Variations? Anyone have any ideas?

Dinner - Car Camping - Gluten-Free Grilled Pork Loin and Sweet Potatoes

Find the recipe and photo at the following link. It looks delicious! Thanks Kate!
http://glutenfree.wordpress.com/2007/07/31/gluten-free-grilled-pork-loin-and-sweet-potatoes/

"Pork Loin Marinade (for a 2-3 pound pork loin)
1/3 c. ground pasilla chiles (buy this in the spice aisle - or better yet, at your local Mexican grocer!)
3/4 c. water
4-6 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tablespoon minced ginger
2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/2 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon Mexican Oregano

1. Heat the olive oil up in a small sauce pan. Add the garlic and ginger and stir until very fragrant (about a minute).
2. Add the remaining marinade ingredients by whisking.
3. Simmer the marinade over low heat for 8 minutes.
4. Cool marinade to room temperature.
5. Pour marinade over pork loin in a large (enough) Ziploc bag.
6. Refrigerate until ready to grill.

Sweet Potatoes:
1. Prepare sweet potatoes by peeling and chopping into large chunks.
2. Drizzle 1-2 Tablespoons of olive oil over sweet potatoes (depending on number of potatoes).
3. Sprinkle 3/4 Tablespoon of sea salt onto potatoes.(NOTE: I also added 2 Tablespoons of brown sugar at this point - as we like our potatoes sweet.)

DIRECTIONS FOR GRILLING:
1. Heat one side of the gas grill to medium-high and the other to low (as low as it goes).
2. Grill the pork loin on the medium-high heat side for 4-5 minutes on each side (flipping once).
3. Move the pork to the low-heat side.
4. In a grill pan, put the sweet potatoes over the medium-high heat side. Turning and stirring throughout the remaining of the cooking time.
5. Cook for 12 minutes (turning potatoes throughout) then flip the pork loins. Cook an additional 12 minutes or until an internal temperature of 147F (pork) and the potatoes are tender. (Total potato cooking time: 25 minutes)
6. Remove pork and potatoes from heat. Tent the pork under aluminum foil and allow to rest for 12-15 minutes.
7. Put the sweet potatoes into a serving bowl. Since we like sweeter potatoes, I drizzled them with 2 Tablespoons of butter, 2 Tablespoons of maple syrup and 1 Tablespoon of brown sugar. Add all seasonings to taste.

Once the resting time is over, slice the pork loin thinly and serve with the grilled sweet potatoes."

Adaptation for camping - Prepare the marinade at home and put it together with the loin in a bag, then freeze the bag.

Dinner - Car Camping - Chicken with BBQ Sauce

Important note – Always make sure to check the ingredients to ensure that they are gluten-free.The following recipe is from Elana’s Pantry. Her website looks really great! Check it out at http://www.elanaspantry.com/
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“To be honest, I am not a natural when it comes to the open flame; in general, my husband does the grilling in our family (so manly!) and slathers up the fixins’ before he throws them on the grill. In order to get my BBQ bearings I went to bbqrecipesecrets.com. On that site, I learned that there are 3 types of barbecue sauce –tomato, mustard or vinegar. Unfortunately, for me, and perhaps some of you, each of the recipes contains a significant amount of sugar, so I used their Basic Tomato BBQ sauce recipe as a map, adding and subtracting from it to create the new one below. I hope you like it Katie!

BBQ Sauce2 tablespoons grapeseed oil
3 cloves garlic,
crushed¼ cup shallots,
minced1 (7 ounce) bottle Bionaturæ® Organic Tomato Paste
1 cup orange juice, fresh squeezed
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
½ teaspoon dry mustard powder
½ teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon celtic sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper

Warm oil in a saucepan over medium low heat
Add garlic and shallot; cook until soft
Add tomato paste, orange juice, vinegar, mustard, paprika, salt and pepper
Simmer over low heat 15 to 20 minutes, stirring often
Baste over fish or chicken
Refrigerate and allow to marinate for 1-3 hours
Grill and serve Serves 6 -makes enough sauce for one whole chicken or 4 breasts”You may notice that grilling instructions are conspicuously absent –you do not want to get them from me. While my husband is not a chef, he is the grill master in the family.”
http://www.elanaspantry.com/condiments/bbq-sauce/
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Adaptation for camping – Prepare the marinade at home, put the chicken in a freezer bag and smother it in the sauce. Freeze it at least a day before your departure and take it out when you pack the cooler. This will do double duty to prolong the life of the chicken and also act to keep other items in the cooler a little bit colder.

Dinner - Car Camping - Grilled Veggies

Thanks to Doug for contributing, known as Caribb on flickr photos. It looks delicious!

Dinner - Car Camping - Salmon & Potato

This one is too easy, it almost isn’t fair! Open a container of salmon, bake a couple of potatoes, and sauté some canned mushrooms and canned green beans.

This is a good dish to save for the end of your trip, after you have consumed a lot of your fresh goods. Vary the vegetables, maybe even add some bacon bits for flavor.

Dinner - Car Camping - Grilled Pork Loin and potatoes

OK, we admit it, we like to grill and we like potatoes! We buy a pork loin just before the trip and freeze it. The second or third day it is thawed and ready to cook, so we get the fire going and start a couple of potatoes, then double layer aluminum foil and wrap the pork, smothering it in BBQ sauce (a call in 2008 found that Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce is gluten-free). Add some mushrooms for flavor and texture. When the fire is ready and the coals are hot, grill the pork, flipping it a couple of times (this is a messy job, but well worth it).
Try baking a potato in aluminum foil in the fire and melting some cheese on it at the end. Saute some veggies and re-heat the leftover rice from yesterday. Don't miss pouring some of the extra sauce on the pork. This is one of our favorites!

Dinner - Car Camping - Honey BBQ Chicken

Honey BBQ ChickenIngredients:2 ½ lb. chicken breasts1 tsp powdered ginger½ cup GF soy sauce¼ cup honey2 cloves garlic (crushed)1 tsp salt1 tsp pepper½ cup GF ketchup¼ cup vegetable oilPreparation:Mix all of the ingredients in a large bowl and add the chicken. Then place the chicken and sauce in a ziplock freezer bag and freeze it. If it’s completely frozen when you leave on your trip, it should stay cold in your cooler for at least 24 hours. Grill and enjoy!We cooked the potatoes in the fire and grilled zucchini in aluminum foil beside the chicken. A little salt on the zucchini and some cheese, butter or sour cream for the potatoes and we were set with a great dinner. An alternative? As in the second photo we made some instant rice and ears of corn.

Recipe from: Faith Community Church Women's Fellowship, p 48, Susan Cook