Shoe Leather: Behind the seams of Shoestring Magazine

Frugal Foodies: 10 Cheap & Easy Campfire Meals

When I climbed Kilimanjaro, I was amazed at the meals the cook put together. We had been climbing for days with very little oxygen, and the cook was whipping up cucumber soups and Spanish omelets. I don't think I've ever eaten so well on a mountain before, and it inspired me to try cooking more adventurous food while in the woods — to step away from the traditional hot dogs and s'mores and get a little campfire gourmet.

So, in honor of my camping vacay in Acadia with Red and the dogs this week, I've compiled a list of my favorite campfire recipes.

First tip: whenever I'm car camping, I bring liberal amounts of aluminum foil. You can wrap just about anything and throw it on the fire for amazing cooked food, with very little cleanup, and it's recyclable.

10 CHEAP & EASY CAMPFIRE MEALS

1. Salsa Chicken

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
1 jar salsa

Wrap each piece of chicken in a foil "envelope." Pour the salsa over the chicken and seal the foil tightly. Place on a rock near the fire, but not directly in the flames, and cook for 30 to 40 minutes, turning every 10 minutes.

2. Foil-Wrapped Veggie Kebabs

Ingredients:

Potato
Carrots
Onions
Mushrooms

Wrap all the veggies in foil and throw the foil "envelope" on hot coals for 15 minutes or more. Traditionally, you would put the kebabs on a stick and cook over an open flame.

3. Rosemary Pesto Fry Bread

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon dry onion flakes
1 tablespoon dry rosemary

I like to prepare the dry ingredients in a Ziploc bag before I leave home. Then, when I'm at the camp site, I can add the water directly into the bag, shake, and I'm ready to cook. Add 1/2 cup water to dry ingredients and shake/stir well before you're ready to cook it. Grab a small chunk of dough and flatten it between your hands. Fry for 5 - 8 minutes each side, add a heaping spoonful of pesto, and serve.

4. Spicy Grilled Corn

Ingredients:

Corn on the cob
Chili powder
Salt
Pepper

Corn on the cob is practically a grilling must, but I learned this little trick from my friend Katarina: sprinkle the corn liberally with chili powder, salt, and pepper and wrap in tinfoil. Place at the edge of the fire and cook for 15 minutes. The chili pepper adds an unexpected burst of flavor to the corn.

5. Campfire Biscuits

Pillsbury or other prepared, refrigerated biscuits
Filling of choice

Take a can of biscuits and roll each individual biscuit into a ball. Stick the ball of dough on the end of your stick, and cook over the fire until golden brown. Remove the "biscuit" from your stick and fill the hole with jam, eggs, cheese, PB&J -- get creative with your fillings.

6. Grilled Asparagus

1 bundle asparagus spears
Butter or olive oil

Drizzle the asparagus with olive oil or butter, wrap in foil, and place in the hot embers of your campfire for 3 to 4 minutes.

7. Grilled Trout

1 whole trout
1 cup of pancake mix

This is one of Red's childhood favorites. He recommends catching the fish yourself from a nearby stream, but for those less adventurous (or those not willing to bargain dinner on the fish actually biting) you can buy a trout at the store. (Just remember that if you do go fishing, make sure you have the proper fishing license for your area.)

Roll your trout in the pancake mix and wrap it in tinfoil. Place the foil "envelope" in the hot embers and cook for 20 minutes. You can also use a skewer (or stick) and cook the trout over an open flame. Insert the skewer lengthwise, starting at the mouth and ending at the tail. Roast the trout until the eyes turn white.

8. Breakfast Burrito

Ingredients:

3 eggs
1 tsp butter
salt and pepper to taste
one Ziploc bag
tortillas
avocado
salsa  

other optional items such as:

green peppers
onions
mushrooms
tomatoes
cheese  

This is a great meal you can make to suit your tastes. Crack the eggs into the Ziploc bag and add your other ingredients. If you've brought a frying pan, you can cook everything in there, but I actually like to put the Ziploc bag directly into a pot of boiling water. It's like boil-in-a-bag rice, but you have a veggie scramble with almost no mess. I warm a tortilla over the fire and spoon on the eggs. Top this off with a little bit of avocado and salsa.

9. Cinnamon Quesadilla S'mores
(taken from the book Campfire Cuisine: Gourmet Recipes for the Great Outdoors)

Ingredients:

4 small flour tortillas
1/2 cup semisweet mini chocolate chips
1/2 cup mini marshmallows
Cinnamon to taste

While they’ll probably never replace the age-old staple of childhood cookouts, these quesadilla-style s'mores are a lot easier to eat than the traditional kind—which will please the adults. The kick of cinnamon and the use of tortillas make them an ideal ending for a Mexican dinner, but they’re great any time.

Place 2 tortillas on the grill over high heat. Top each with half of the chocolate chips, half of the marshmallows, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Place the remaining two tortillas on top. Cook until the bottom tortilla is lightly browned and crisp, about 3 to 4 minutes, then carefully flip them. Cook until the second side is lightly browned and crisp, about 3 to 4 minutes more. Cut each into quarters and serve.

10.  Parsley Potato Packets

2 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon minced parsley
dash of salt
squeeze of lemon juice
pinch coarsely ground black pepper
1 1/2 pound(s) small red potatoes, cut in half

For camping condiments like the lemon juice, I like to grab packets from neighborhood fast food joints and restaurants and save them to take with me camping. Wrap all the ingredients above in foil, and put the "envelope" in the coals for  approximately 30 minutes.

What are your favorite campfire meals, gourmet or otherwise? We want to hear them!

~ Meghan

Shoestring Eats: Can a National Company Be Considered Local?

Last week, Pepsi launched a new advertising campaign for Frito-Lay potato chips. The premise behind the campaign was to highlight the potato farmers behind Frito-Lay potato chips. Locavores have been up in arms ever since.

Locavores try to eat food that's been grown within a 100 mile radius of where they live. Some people take it even further, and only eat food they grow themselves. Eating local food boosts the local economy, cuts down on food costs, and cuts down pollution from transport. Plus, the less time your food stays on the truck, the longer your food will stay fresh.

Melissa and I recently went to a Stop & Shop luncheon, held at the prestigious Hamersley's Bistro here in Boston. Hamersley's Bistro has long been a proponent of eating local. Chef Gordon Hamersley tries to source 90% of the food for his restaurant from local farmers, and I think it shows. If you're in Boston, a stop at Hamersley's for their roast chicken is a must. Anyhow, at this luncheon, Stop & Shop held a round table discussion, asking us (local bloggers and editors) what we felt our readers needed to make their food budget stretch a little further. I asked Stop & Shop when they would be introducing more local produce. They touted their eco-friendly initiatives, but my specific question was never answered.

As it turns out, unlike organic, there is no federal definition of local. Good Magazine's post Local Lay's: When Local Goes Loco is an excellent read on this subject. Now I feel for potato farmers. The year that I spent sharecropping in Vermont was quite possibly one of the most physically strenuous jobs that I have ever held. It is tough freaking work. Even after the crop is harvested, you need to make sure that all the potatoes are out of the field.

I'm just not convinced that if those potatoes were shipped off to a processing plant to be made into potato chips, if that counts as "local" food. Having worked in the crazy land of advertising, I also understand that you have to push a gimmick, and local food is a big one right now.

Frito-Lay highlights American farmers, but as a $12 billion convenient foods business unit of Pepsi-Co, I fail to see how they understand the struggles of small farms. Frito-Lay has a "chip tracker" on their website, allowing you to track where your bag of potato chips originated from. I'd try it, but I don't have a bag of Lays. It seems a little creepy to me. If I'm going to eat junk food, I don't want to know how many thousands of miles it's traveled, nor do I want to think about how its going to be made.

If you're not a locavore, do you think that this is an effective marketing campaign?

~Meghan

Frugal Foodies: Indian Takeaway

Ginger and I are closet foodies. Forget couture and modern decor — we frequently blow our budget on anything and everything epicurean, from street food to Michelin-starred fine dining. (What can I say? I'm a sucker for anything French.)

Not going out to dinner as frequently and curbing the urge to call up and order takeout have been the hardest parts of forgoing a paycheck to live the dream. But limitation is the mother of innovation, and we're discovering new delights with each passing week and grocery trip, some that we'll take with us into the flush days of the future. (You know, when we turn Shoestring into the publishing empire it's destined to become, and Meghan and I are as rich as Martha and Oprah...but I digress.)

The one thing I miss most from my formerly flush, six-figure life is my weekly Indian lunch at Punjab Cafe in Quincy, Mass. with Chris and Lanny, friends from my second-to-last start-up, a social networking site for the arts & entertainment industry called Nextcat. Punjab isn't exactly pricey — our total bill would always be less than $35, and our favorite chicken tikka masala lunch special was just $6.95 per person — but we've all spread out and day jobs (or lack thereof) and gas prices have, over time, removed this simple splurge from our budgets.

Which is why I was psyched that, at a recent dinner at his house, Chris introduced me to Patak's tikka masala curry, quite possibly the closest thing in a jar to Punjab's chicken tikka masala and available at Stop & Shop for just $3.99 (by the half case on Amazon for about $22). Whether you're trying to cut back on takeaway or just don't have any good Indian restaurants near you, Patak's is the closest thing to authentic that I've yet found, and unbelievably affordable. It has just the right mix of tomato, tangy lemon and cilantro, and heat from the turmeric. Just add grilled chicken, rice, and naan and you've got yourself a quick and cheap meal for four. Namaste, Patak family, namaste.

Tell us: What are your favorite grocery store finds? Things that satisfy your inner foodie while staying within your frugal budget? We're always looking for cheap eats, so leave us your recommendations in the comments and we'll pick up your products to test drive in our kitchen.

~ Melissa

Frugal Foodies: Pop Culture Pot Luck Suppers

Last night, some friends and I kicked off another exciting season of Bravo's hit culinary reality show, Top Chef, with our favorite frugal foodie tradition: the Pop Culture Pot Luck. Especially right now, it's a fantastic way to hone your chops as an amateur chef while at the same time taking a huge chunk out of your monthly fine dining expenses and getting to spend time with other geeks for anything gourmet.

So, how does it work? Every Wednesday night from now until the finale, about a dozen of my favorite foodies will gather for a weekly pot luck supper where we recreate dishes from the past five seasons of challenges on Top Chef (on a dime, of course) and watch the newest episode together. We each take turns hosting a week, and each host then cooks the main entree while everyone else vies for the amuse bouche, appetizer, salad, and dessert courses. Plus, everyone brings a bottle of wine under $10 to $15 to pair with their course. (I brought a bottle of $2.99 Charles Shaw sauvignon blanc from Trader Joe's last night, which was surprisingly good.)

The best part about it is that we created a fantasy league on Fafarazzi.com to track our favorite "cheftestants" and our three-person teams (see mine at left and below) score us points each week for winning challenges, swearing, and using favorite catchphrases from the show, among other things. At the end of the season, we'll award first, second, and third place prizes for the Top Foodies. Just like a regular fantasy sports league, each player kicks in a small amount at the beginning of the season ($25), which we'll use towards prizes and catering the finale party to the theme of the exotic locale in which the final two episodes are being filmed. Last year, we had the fabulous fortune of finding out that the founders and offices of Fafarazzi are based right here in Boston, so we invited them to join us.

To create your own free account and choose a team, and to either create or join a fantasy league, check out Fafarazzi. And, if you haven't already, subscribe to Shoestring Magazine for free now to get the whole scoop—including photos from last night's event with Todd Galloway from Fafarazzi—in next week's issue!