Feeding a large family while tent camping

Taking a large family camping can seem like an overwhelming task. Then thinking about feeding a large family while tent camping seems somewhat crazy. But it doesn’t have to be. You need to just come with a good plan. I hope this post will give you some good ideas for your own tent camping trip.

We tent camp mainly because it is an semi affordable way to take our children on adventures. First off our family is SO BIG that we are usually required to book 3 camp sites. We then try to strategically place 14 people among 4 tents and 3 site. We usually do not know if our site will be close to each other or not.

SO I need to be prepared. If you haven’t seen my other post about the items I bring. Along with my free printable then you can check out that post here.

Free camping printableshttps://mommabear2many.com/2023/07/17/free-camping-printables/

SO now that you have gone to print all those freebies lets talk about the big picture. They say an army runs on it’s stomach I think many days my army aka family runs on it’s stomach as well. SO having a food plan is key to the success or failure of the trip.

When camping we are usually busy hiking, swimming and adventuring all day. SO we need good snacks for those times. Then the day seems to cool down alittle and we sit back and camp and I have ravenous people! So let’s go through some meal that might help you feed your Large family while tent camping.

Breakfast

For breakfasts I want a combo of super easy and lets chill at the campground meals. Super easy might be cereal, granola, muffins, cereal bars. Other meal might be suppers leftover, oatmeal, eggs, potatoes, sausage.

For me as a homesteading momma I feel blessed to have many canned foods including meats. So for my plan this time I have measured our how much oatmeal we would use for one meal. I put that in a gallon Ziploc. Then in a separate smaller Ziploc added cinnamon and sugar. For our household that looks like 7 cups of oats, 1 cup brown sugar, 4 T cinnamon.

Other breakfast include some premade muffins. Here are some of our favorite

Banana muffins https://mommabear2many.com/2023/04/20/the-best-gluten-free-banana-muffins/#comment-6

Pumpkin

chocolate chip

blueberry

All those are favorites I will add in as I make recipe cards for these.

Remember when you are packing that if you are camping for a long period you want to eat perishable things the beginning of the week. So if you have eggs already cracked and ready to pour. Or pancake mix in the same scenario you will want to eat those things first.

I am choosing powdered eggs, home canned potatoes, and canned sausage patties. I could serve near the end of the week.

Lunch

Keeping it simple this time with basic sandwich type ideas. Things like rice cakes and Pb, lunchmeat, chicken salad, egg salad, Pb and fluff or jelly. We would eat the lunch meat and say premade salad at first. But watch my video that goes with this post to see how we might do things like tuna or chicken salad.

That can be found HERE

Supper

Sat- Warm a meal … this would be a freezer meal that I would pull out frozen early morning that would be ready for supper.

Sun-Hamburger, premade pasta salad, veg and ranch

Mon- Hot dog, pasta salad, veg and ranch or dip

Tues-Now I start using canned so canned chicken to make cranberry chicken. I make sure to mark all bottles with what meal I will use them or else I might use before I was suppose to. Boil in the bag rice is alot easier to clean. canned veg or leftover fruits and veggies

Wed- Leftovers or chips, refried beans and cheese

Thur- baked beans and hot dogs hot dogs last alot longer than hamburgers so keep this in mind

Fri- Chill + corn pancake

Sat – we will be moving from one campground to another so this is a quick dump type recipe. Beef stew all home-canned ingredients!

Sun-Shredded beef over boil in the bag rice with green beans

Download my specific menu

Feeding a large family while tent camping can be found here.

So I hope you all enjoyed this post! Share below any tips and tricks because we can always glean from one another!