Carry on camping!

 Spring marks the start of the camping season. I began my camping life at the age of 8 months and this continued until the age of 30. It was a very happy period spent with family and friends, at home and abroad, and was how I met my husband.

In the early days camping was under canvas with my parents and sister. It was the 1960s and we had the freedom to roam fields, woods and streams. Once, whilst paddling in a stream I found two bottles of milk and toddled back to my parents carrying my finds. Of course the milk belonged to another family who were keeping their milk cool and was duly returned to them.

In those days we rarely camped on campsites as Clubs would arrange to use farmers fields for the purpose. This meant that a milk churn would be given to the stewarding family to ladle out pints of milk to those wanting to purchase it. Eggs and other produce were sometimes on sale too. Friendly farmers would allow us to play in the barns, collect eggs or watch cows being milked before being allowed to taste the fresh, still-warm, milk. Den building was a popular activity and we were only limited by our own imaginations. We would wake up to the smell of bacon frying in the open air as people cooked and ate al fresco.

We had many camping friends we called auntie and uncle and one of my "aunties" asked me to wash the cabbage for her. It took several trips to the water tap to collect enough water to rinse the rather soapy cabbage which I had washed using Stardrops washing up liquid!

By the 1970s we had a caravan, although my sister and I still preferred to sleep in our own little tent. We had a coolbox which dropped through a hole in the caravan floor and kept everything chilled in the shade of the chassis. Cheese and wine gatherings became popular as, it seemed, everyone made their own wine. There was plenty around and we children could always manage to surreptitiously sneak a drop. My friend's father made a delicious elderberry wine which we took as reward for helping him to pick the elderberries!

By the 1980s campers went barbecue crazy and the campsites were shrouded in plumes of smoke from charred burgers and sausages. As I became vegetarian in 1990 it was a struggle to keep my corn on the cob separate from everyone else's meat and utensils so foil wrapping was the order of the day. Things had moved on apace and by then everyone had refrigerators in their caravans, cassette toilets and gas barbecues.

Camping in the 1960s = freedom

Camping in the 1990s = flashdom!

The Best Ever Beans on Toast!

An easy meal for a Vegetarian is often a baked jacket potato or beans on toast. When I was younger we used to return from a camping weekend and, whilst my parents unpacked, my sister and I would be sent upstairs for a bath and then return downstairs with rosy cheeks and damp hair to a quick and easy supper of beans on toast before bed.

I have always loved this simple meal and it's definitely my "go to" meal when I surface from a migraine, need to line my stomach before a night out on the tiles or just want a quick comfort fix.

In my early twenties I met a girl who came to temp in my office. It turned out we had lots in common and liked all the same things. One day whilst discussing what we would make for tea, she mentioned a recipe for Bean Rarebit in a Marks and Spencer Salads and Snacks book. I had the same book, given by a family friend for my 21st birthday! I rushed home to make the posh beans on toast that night and, some 30 years later, still make it occasionally. I have adapted the recipe a little over the years but it remains a firm favourite.

Bean Rarebit (or posh beans on toast) Serves 1 hungry vegetarian

20g butter

1 small onion finely chopped

1 garlic clove crushed or grated

1/2 pepper, deseeded & thinly sliced 

1 can Heinz Five Beanz

2x15ml spoons tomato ketchup

1x15ml spoon vegetarian Worcestershire sauce

(I use Hendersons Yorkshire Relish)

Salt & Pepper

1x5ml chilli powder

Cheddar cheese grated

2 slices hot buttered toast

Melt the butter, add onion, garlic, pepper and fry til soft. Add the beans, ketchup, W sauce, salt, pepper, chilli powder. Cook for 5 mins. Add the cheese and stir for 3 mins until melted. Place on hot buttered toast and serve immediately (like my lava latte, I like mine hot). Enjoy!

The recipe from the early 1980s used baked beans and kidney beans but I use the Five Beans now. It also states a green pepper but now, of course, we have the choice of red, orange, yellow and, I have recently discovered, black pepper!