Hi There

I've been browsing this site since before Xmas. In that time I bought two cast iron skillets (cute little one and big one), seasoned them in the oven, and been having a lot of fun with them both.  Yesterday my 10 year old daughter (who is a Brownie) was desparate to make a cooking fire like she had learnt at brownies.  She cooked sausages on a skillet.  We did the smores thing stickless and just put them on the grate we rested the skillet on and made some awful damper (thrown out) on the side of the fire LOL!!

My daughter was so excited about the whole process that she wanted to do more.  So today I bought my first camp oven.  It was a cheapie ($16.95) 4.5 quart from Downunder Camping.  Also bought one of those lid lifters too $4.95. and a single jaffle iron $5.95 Went to another camping store called Camping Solutions and they had round scone irons (look like those dutch pancake irons that are $50 from those dutch pancake sellers) for $10 which was just too cute to pass up.

Anyway.. she likes using wood, not heatbeats (I'll have to try that another time), so we had to collect wood, she dug the hole, set up the fire, did everything.  The recipe we used was from a book I recently got at a booksale.  The book is called the Pershill Camp Cookbook, and it is a concotion based on their easy one pot meal when you are in a hurry

Into Camp oven

oil, cut up onion, cut up sliced salami (100grams, I just used a pack)
When cooked a bit, I added two chopped big tomotoes, and a heap of chopped mushrooms, and some chopped thyme and basil which were in the garden just near the camp oven.
When this cooked a bit, added 1 cup basmati rice (an extra long grain one from an asian shop that was amazingly LONG - it was called basmati stella, not sure what that means) and two cups water.
Covered it (lid on and put coals over lid) and cooked for about 25 minutes until rice was cooked.
Served with grated mozzarella cheese and black pepper.

My daughter isn't too agreeable about adding vegetables to things LOL!!  So it was based on things she would eat.

This was a really yummy meal though, we all loved it.  More veggies, garlic, olives etc would have been great in it too.

I have photos, but I can't get them to work.

Hi Violetmay and welcome to the site.

That looks like a yummy meal.  Good to see you getting into it.  Thats a good thing about camp oven cooking is the one pot meals.

Cheers


Derek

Welcome and it looks good to me.

Welcome mate...

As said - the billy lids just luv it (cooking in the co) and they learn stuff for life. This is a great country and what better way for the kids eh but!!!!

Great lookin tucker as well...

Grrr!!!

Thanks Everyone for your welcomes.   I will have to try the roast chicken, I think we'll have to go heatbeads with that as I don't think we'd get enough heat (or a fire that would last long enough to cook a chook with just wood).  For my kids, it's all about the excitement of the fire though.  The fire to cook the rice dish was big enough (my elder daughter, 12, was panicking thinking we'd have to get the fire brigade) so I don't want to do much more wood than maybe 30 minutes cooking time.

I know about Derek using an old electric frypan, but I don't have a dead one to use, so I wonder if I just put a metal tray on the weber bbq grill, and put the heat beads and a trivet on that.  Then put the camp oven on that, and then another trivet in the campoven for the chicken.  I have a chimney (redheads one) to heat the heatbeads so that is no problem.

Hmm... might go for lemon and rosemary roast chicken tomorrow night for dinner now.. thanks for the suggestion.  I'll have to go and buy another trivet but that's Ok.  I'm going to Anaconda (Loagan, Brisbane) tomorrow so will be good to actually have something to buy when I get there.