These are all very straightforward, but there are some subtle details implied by them. For example, fires are not a good idea in the grasslands. It's either too hot for them, or more importantly just too dangerous. So instead, we travel with a rectangular charcoal grill with a lid. The whole thing snaps together like a travel bag, making it easy to store in the car, and the lid ensures that sparks don't fly around. Wildfires always need to be foremost in your mind when visiting the prairie. Most of our recipes are cooked over a charcoal grill.

Another practicality to consider is food storage and refrigeration. I've already discussed this at some length in the The Art of Packing Food section. You'll note that many of our recipes take advantage of some of those concepts. For example, Camp Bundles (below) uses cooked or smoked meat from a hermetically sealed and previously frozen package. Thus, it is suitable for use four days into the trip and still safe to eat. Save the fresh meats for the first two days instead.

Anyway, see what you think.

Camp Bundles

You can make this one up on the fly, using whatever you have available in the larder. But here are the ingredients we use to serve two people:

• 4 small red potatoes, halved
• 1 green bell pepper
• 1 parsnip
• 1 yam
• 1 red onion
• handful of baby carrots, halved
• ham steak or smoked kielbasa, cubed
• 2 ice cubes
• Italian dressing
• coarse ground black pepper
• 1 foil cooking bag

Start by washing the potatoes and peeling the parsnip, yam and onion. Then cut up the vegetables and meat as desired to make bite-size pieces or cubes. Place vegetables and meat in a foil bag. (Click on the thumbnail above to see the meal in progress).

Next splash in Italian dressing and several generous shakes of black pepper, then slosh the bag around to mix everything up. Add two ice cubes. Finally, seal the bag tightly and cook in a covered charcoal grill for 1 hour. Rotate and flip the bag every 15 minutes so everything cooks evenly.

That's all it takes, and it tastes great! Here are a couple of the practicalities I alluded to earlier:

• We already have sliced bell peppers in the cooler from the start of the trip. They make a great substitute for lettuce on noon sandwiches (which doesn't keep in a cooler very well, tending to wilt and discolor). We'll typically use up any leftover pepper slices in the camp bundles later on. Likewise, we always keep the baby carrots on hand for munching at lunch.
• The ice cubes, naturally enough, are an easy way to add moisture, ensuring that the vegetables steam, rather than roast.
• The Italian dressing makes a great marinade. Best of all we can be using it earlier in the trip on green salads which don't last too long in a cooler. (See above). Best of all, Italian dressing contains only oil and vinegar—not eggs—meaning it travels well in the cooler without risk of botulism.
• The meat is already cooked or smoked and has traveled frozen in its original hermetically sealed wrapping. Sometimes on longer trips we've even used canned corned beef which doesn't need to be refrigerated at all.
• Cooking over a covered charcoal grill is inherently safer in the grasslands. Even better, there's a fair amount of leeway in the timing, meaning that you can kick back and relax while everything's cooking away. No clock-watching is necessary, so if social hour lasts a little longer than expected, that's okay; this is vacation, don't you know!

More Recipes Coming Soon!