First rule to remember is that while winter camping, you need to pack and eat a lot of food. It is estimated that your body requires at least 4,500 calories each day because of the extra energy needed to keep your body warm. Depending on your health, body metabolism, age, and sex over 5,000 calories may be burned. Paradoxically, your appetite may be less due to these same winter factors.

You may need to encourage yourself and those in your care to eat. The best way to do that is to plan an appealing menu. So let’s talk about what to pack.

You generally want to stay away from fresh food in the winter. Fresh foods such as fruit and vegetables contain water and will freeze. Dairy product such as cheese and butter are okay.

For breakfast, keep it simple. It may be hard enough to get out of your sleeping bag and you’ll want to get warm quick. Instant oatmeal or granola in hot milk is an easy choice. Hot milk can be made easily by mixing hot water and dry or powdered milk. Throwing in some margerine, will enable you to sneak some extra fat calories into the bodies of any children who may have trouble eating enough food to reach the higher caloric total needed.

Eggs (which may freeze) and pancakes get cold very quickly and generally lose their taste and appeal when cold. However bacon is still a possibility and a great source of protein. It can also be used later in the day for sandwiches or snacks. To cook bagels or english muffins, simply melt butter in a pan and toss in your bread!

Be very careful with coffee on your camping trip. Because caffeine is a diuretic, you’ll lose water which can lead to dehydration and possibly hypothermia. If you still must have coffee, go for decaf.

Please see tomorrow’s post for lunch and dinner trips plus more!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 2:00 am and is filed under cooking, campfires. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.