29.6.10

A Give Away!! Roll Up Roll Up!!

Recently I entered a draw to win a book on The BabyBudgeting Blog and was super lucky and won!! (yay me!)

Then a weird thing happened, the lovely book that arrived was not the book I expected to win, it was not Cool Camping Kids, but was in fact The Cool Camping CookBook. Now, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth so I started to read it and hoped it would be filled with fabulous recipes that I could use when camping in one of my many tents (oh the camping addiction!) but..



...it's not a recipe book for me; to start with the foreword is written by Bear Grylls, never mind his daft name, the picture of him says it all, lounging, posing on a camp bed with artistically smeared muddy face.....yuk, loves himself far too much, give me Ray Mears any day. So a bad start but let's be brave and launch into the food itself, after all it's what the book is about.

The recipes are illustrated with gorgeous pictures of food and campfires. The recipes themselves sound lovely and use various cooking methods, fire pits, barbecue's, camp stoves, pots etc......... But (and it's a big but, as would yours be if you ate too many of the roasted chocolate bananas ) most are not 'easy' recipes for a minimalistic camper, so unless you take a large amount of kitchen stuff with you, you'd be out of luck. many recipes rely on planning at home such as marinating or bringing a large selection of both food and cooking utensils and so for me this book was not really helpful. I need to know what to cook in a single pot on a single stove with only a penknife!

That said if you planned a barbecue or an evening round a fire pit with friends, or even an evening in, there are some great recipes, it's just that I don't think they are ideally suited to camping.

I may be wrong of course, you may always cook elaborate meals outside your tent in which case you'd love to take this book camping!

And with that in mind I would like to pass it on, give it away, to a blog reader, all you need to do to enter is to comment on this post and tell me either your best or worst camping food story! have you cooked a great meal in 10 minutes/ or slaved for 2 hours to produce a burnt sausage? let me know.
(if you've never camped tell me what you would attempt to cook - that should be fun!!)

I'll draw the name from a hat and contact you for your address if you win on or about the 10th July 2010

I haven't actually told you the best bit, when I told the lovely Becky at BabyBudgeting she sorted out the correct book to be sent out - and it is perfect in all respect and I love it! but even better, the lovely publishers sent me an extra book.....which I will reveal and review soon...it's a cracker!

15 comments:

  1. Doesn't look like my cuppa tea either (and I am so with you on Bear; give me Ray any day of the week!) and I've never been camping :-O so I can't even give you a camping cooking story anyway!!

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  2. Anonymous30/6/10

    I love camping but tend to stick to easy things like bbq's and fry-ups!

    I did once cook beef in oyster sauce with spinach and oyster mushrooms in a big wok, with homemade egg fried rice, which I thought was quite an accomplishment!

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  3. Maybe this is something for me. But i wouldn't take it on a campingtrip... No more camping for me.

    Last time we went camping we had a few days where it stormed pretty badly. I had to cook on a tiny gasburner but the wind kept blowing it out. After an hour of trying to cook macaroni a neighbour lent me his windscreen. 3 metal plates put together with duct tape. 10 minutes later, dinner was ready.
    The next day the neighbours were gone and again we couldn't cook anything. We decided to go for fish and chips, but ended up going home with food poisoning... So much for camping...

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  4. RC I have amended the entry requirements for the virgin (in a camping sense) out there! LOL but wait til you hear about the next book I got, it's much better!

    B4kersgirl - I stick to easy stuff too, but that sounds yummy!!

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  5. AngelFrouk , i have a wind shelter LOL and a camp toaster - that fits onto the stove - best 2 bits of kit I own! (that and the whistling kettle!)

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  6. Ugh, Bear Grylls - I wish a bloody bear would grill him! Haha

    I love Ray Mears. I always learn something fascinating with every program and he's really funny and quite self-deprecating when he's interviewed. Where as Grylls is a showman I always get the feeling Ray really loves and respects the land he's harvesting from.

    I look forward to finding out what this other book is! :)

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  7. "a camp toaster" ...
    No I can't say it...

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  8. What would I cook? (I have to answer this because I have never actually been camping, although I once stayed in a three star hotel, I ask you, only three stars? What were my television crew thinking?)

    Well, first, one knows, one simply cannot cook without being nude. You probably know I love to strip off at every available opportunity, and this is no exception.

    I would find the heart of some poor bird that I had killed with my own bear hands (geddit? bear? not bare? Oh, forget it) - well, I say that, actually, I'd get someone from the crew to do it, but I wouldn't show that bit, and I'd have a close up shot of me afterwards holding the bird, possibly a sparrow (I would of course be filming this somewhere in the Home Counties, obviously), in one hand, and the heart in the other.

    And to drink, well, you know how much I love to drink my own willy wee. Also it gives me an opportunity to not-quite-show-but-almost-show my manly manhood on film, and I know all you laydees love that. So, willy wee it is.

    I'd drink it and eat it for about five seconds, and smile while I did it, looking all butch (I mean, in a really hetero way, obviously) and masculine. Then I'd say "ugh, sod this for a larf, let's go the dog and duck for some kettle chips and a glass of continental lager".



    p.s. this is totally a parody please don't sue me! RC xx

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  9. VickiRamsay6/7/10

    Haven't been camping since I was 14 (in someone's back garden), but now that the genius of the 'shit box' has been brought to my attention I fully intend to give it a bash when toddler is a bit older.

    I can burn a mean marshmallow on an open fire though :-) x

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  10. DanteBanks6/7/10

    Give me the book!

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  11. Anonymous7/7/10

    My new favourite thing to cook while camping is hot pitta breads stuffed with chocolate (From Annie Bell's Camping Cookbook). It oozes, it's yummy and it kept everybody happy at breakfast time in the rain. It is unbeatable so send me the book now please!

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  12. Oh my dear lord let me win this book, my camping cooking is totally uninspirational, I pack tins of beans and spaghetti, we have sausages and burgers, the most exciting thing I cook is bananas split open with chocolate pushed in and the OH won't eat that.....

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  13. Oh my dear lord let me win this book, my camping cooking is totally uninspirational, I pack tins of beans and spaghetti, we have sausages and burgers, the most exciting thing I cook is bananas split open with chocolate pushed in and the OH won't eat that.....

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  14. iused http://www.random.org/ to choose the winner....and it is Julie! - Kailexness!!

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