Camp Cooking on the River

This simple but delicious camp meal was a breeze. I marinated the London broil and made the quinoa, avocado and mango salad at home. Our garden peas were stir fried tender crisp with butter and spring onions. 

I wasn't always a food Nazi, but now that I am, kinda, I see no reason to eat anything camping that I wouldn't ordinarily consume. PK and I are moving toward "later life", but we still sleep on the ground in a tent, stumble outside in the dark seeking nighttime bladder relief, and cook under what some might consider primitive conditions so we can spend a few days rafting and camping on the banks of Oregon's Wild and Scenic Rogue River, which is literally in our backyard. We've also done self-guided trips on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, on the Snake River between Oregon and Idaho, and on Idaho's Middle Fork of the Salmon through the Frank Church Wilderness. Every trip, we have to cook, and, most often, enjoy (or endure) the cooking of our companions. 
 A few of you may have read a post I wrote in August 2009 in which I declared a hiatus from river trips. Obviously I have come around. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip described here. Of course, we had benevolent weather and there were just four of us. It was heaven. It will be my one river trip this year. More than that, and I could get sick of river trips for the reasons described in the earlier post.

But back to camp cooking. We do not suffer. Through the years we've developed a proper kitchen that weighs a ton and is getting harder to sling around as the years accumulate. However, once it's set up, it's deluxe.

This custom-made aluminum box holds enough cookware, cutlery and

dinnerware for preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner for about 16 people. 

But eeeuuwww. I don't like those big groups anymore.

Fellow camper and friend of 30-some years, Linda Shonk, is up at the crack heating water for our morning beverages in the camp kitchen. The rectangular thing on the ground by the camp chairs is a fire pan, a mandated piece of equipment to save beaches from fire rings. We barbecued our London broil over it, using a portable grill. The small boat between the rafts got away from another group. We secured it on the beach for them to find. Hope they did!

We haul a giant cooler packed with anything we want to eat or drink. And I mean anything. On one trip, another couple prepared a salt-encrusted prime rib roast on a 100-degree day! (They later divorced, and that may have been the reason.) We've had stuffed cornish game hens, eggs Benedict with hollandaise made from scratch, pork roast, lasagna, cherry cobbler, chocolate cake—whatever will fit into a Dutch oven, over a grill or into industrial-sized cooking pots or fry pans.

The homemade table folds up as does the muslin utensil organizer.

As usual, rocks become part of the kitchen. 

Here's PK, always ready to ply his companions with quality tequila.
After the big rapids, of course. 

Cocktail hour after a tough day of floating class 2 and 3 rapids. Linda and I also hiked several miles on the Rogue River Trail. Note the crowds. For an appetizer we made fresh guacamole with plenty of lime, salt and chopped sweet onion eaten with blue corn chips. 

Our home for the night in our vintage Moss tent. Ahhhh.

PK packing up the kitchen on day two as we prepare to move downstream.

Here I am at our second and last camp enjoying a cold drink and cool river on a hot day.
My bikini days are long over, by the way. I'm now a cover-up girl.