The book, Dirty Gourmet: Food for Your Outdoor Adventures, is chock full of recipes and tips for cooking for all of your outdoor adventures, whether that means a five-day backpacking trip through Sequoia National Park, a large family “glampout” at a fancy beach camping resort, or just a quick impulse picnic in your local public lands. We will teach you about important considerations for adapting your food to your trip so that you can execute delicious meals without getting stuck dragging a super heavy backpack or becoming a slave to your camp kitchen.

The year’s first winter storm in California is finally upon us, and it’s getting us excited about plans to host some wildflower-filled events to celebrate the book’s launch. We will keep you posted on dates and locations soon!

Until then, we’re back in our camp kitchens creating more recipes to share with you starting with a twist on a classic (one of our favorite things to do). Pineapple Coconut Upside Down Cake is conveniently vegan, making it a bit healthier and easier to execute at your next winter campfire.

Drape blankets across all your camp chairs and grab a Vanilla Cider Cocktail to accompany gazing at the Pleides and Orion.

We taught three classes: Campfire Cooking, Backpacking Cooking, and Fun Family Camp Cooking. Our first class of each day was “Campfire Cooking.” This was a fun class to teach, even though we couldn’t have an actual campfire on the premises. We did some magic cooking, and made this delicious and impressive Mountain Berry Cobbler in our virtual campfire. We got LOTS of positive feedback, and tested this recipe about 8 times, so we feel pretty confident that your co-campers will love it too.

This cobbler is a quick and easy dessert, but would also go great with a cup of coffee the next morning. It’s not too late to sign up for Outessa Weekend #2 in Powder Mountain, Utah. We’ll be there September 9, and hope to see you too!

Aimee is the baker. Mai-yan and I like to bake for Aimee as a joke. You should’ve seen the soggy granola-crusted cheesecake we attempted for her birthday last year. (“Water bath? Springform pan? Wait-what? We have to chill it for 4 hours? It’s 10pm now and we are ready to sing Happy Birthday!”). So it was an equally funny joke when my friend from work brought me some sourdough starter. I kept it alive because I couldn’t let him down.

Aimee lent me her book, Josey Baker Bread, and I spent a day off following the rules and baking some bread. It came out “great.” Brown, sour flavored, bread shaped. I didn’t love it, though. There wasn’t anything special about it. So I gave it away.

I tried again when I visited my parents in Las Vegas a few weeks later. We were at the stage when you let it sit on the counter for 3 hours before shaping the loaf, and after 1 hour, it had blown up like a balloon and oozed out of the bowl all over the counter. My mom made me bake it anyway, and it turned out like bread again, and everyone ate it (I told them I was testing their politeness threshold).

It took me months to want to try again, and by that time, it was last week, and it was 100 degrees outside. I did NOT want to turn on my oven. I decided it was time to test this thing out as a Dirty Gourmet recipe, so I set up my backyard fire pit and got out some charcoal and a dutch oven. I followed the recipe for a “hearth loaf,” which is free form and you get to slash the top of the bread with a scalpel, leaving that beautiful crack in the top. I followed the Dutch Oven Temperature Chart we often use, but it doesn’t go high enough in temperature so I added a few extra coals. The first loaf baked quickly and burned all across the bottom, but I’ve never seen such color and texture on a homemade crust before! The coals had died down significantly by the second loaf’s turn to bake (have an extra batch ready), so it took longer, but it still baked up crusty and sour like I wanted.

This is how I’ll be baking my bread from now on, and I’m going to be baking a lot more often now that I can avoid turning on my oven.

Camping and baking can be more tricky. I recommend doing the whole process at camp, rather than trying to travel with shaped loaves. Start with your backyard. That still counts as getting outside in my book!

Aside from veganizing it, there are a couple of other things I wanted to change about the recipe. First, in the original recipe, we called for canned or frozen corn. That still works fine, but with the abundance of corn in summer, I opted to use fresh. It’s worth the effort to grill it and then cut it off the cob for some smoky flavor. Second, this is a great recipe to make entirely on the campfire. Grill the veggies on the fire and then cook the soup in a dutch oven instead of on your camp stove (of course you still can just use your camp stove though!).

Instead of sour cream, I used cashew cream that I made ahead of time at home. This thickens the soup beautifully and makes it rich and satisfying. You can substitute 1 cup of vegan sour cream if you don’t want to make the cashew cream.

I’ve always wanted to make potato skins on the campfire, but I didn’t want the extra task of dealing with the rest of the potato. I finally devised a way to do it with no waste or second recipe. I cut the potato into thick disks, or medallions. They baked up nicely in a dutch oven in a matter of about 15 minutes. A dutch oven would do larger quantities, but I also like the idea of using a pie iron and having my guests cook up their. This would make cooking them into more of an activity, and it would be more difficult to get filled up before dinner. (It’s hard to stop yourself from shoveling too many potatoes into your mouth when you’re hungry- or ever).

I recently tested this recipe out while I was stuck in the latest “storm of the century” on the east coast (we’ve been having a lot of those lately). I was in North Carolina, which got more ice than snow. Though dangerous, the woods looked incredibly beautiful. It was as if every tree branch and blade of grass was encased in glass.

Campfire food is my favorite kind to make in the winter. No one should have to be banished away from the warmth while cooking for the rest of the group.

If you’re intimidated by dutch oven cooking, this is a great recipe to start with. It’s not super easy to burn, which is always a concern with cooking on a campfire, and even if it does burn, it will probably be salvageable if you just scoop it out from the middle.

You can vary the fruit according to the season, but I love the combination of cranberries and apples. Both are tart and add a bright element to this crisp, in contrast to the sweet topping. I love the subtle coconut flavor from virgin coconut oil, but you can use refined coconut oil if you don’t like that flavor. A good pinch of salt really makes a difference in the topping, so make sure you taste it before you bake it and add more if needed.

To avoid having to bring your entire package of flour, sugar, etc, measure and mix the dry ingredients at home. You can mix them in a ziplock bag or in a tupperware. In this case, you would have one container for the fruit and another for the topping.

Food is usually tricky on our weekend trips. Different friends show up at different times throughout the weekend, so most expect to just cook for themselves. We have food all over the place, all the time. We still end up sharing a lot of it, so we finally thought to change the process last week. Everyone was responsible for one complete meal. Each meal was easy, and everyone only had to be responsible for one meal’s worth of prep and cleanup. And it was BYO plates and sporks. I was in charge of a camping dinner, which I was able to prepare almost completely at home, and just reheat in a dutch oven over the campfire. On a cold night under the stars, there’s nothing better than a hearty soup like this albondigas.

Soup is hard to impress. It usually tastes fine, but just that. At least my soup. So lucky for you, this is Wes’s. This soup is hearty, but ends with a burst of zippy freshness from lime and cilantro. Spicy chipotle keeps your belly warm long after your bowl has been inhaled. Crispy chips and melty meatballs help complete a truly perfect balance of flavor and texture. I really love this soup.

You can make this soup at camp, but I recommend preparing it at home sometime during the week, and finishing it off in a dutch oven the night you arrive. We like to make open-faced quesadillas to go with the soup. Go ahead and fry them cheese-side down. My method: lay the cheese in the pan first, then top it with a tortilla. Flip once the cheese is crispy. These aren’t as pretty as you’ll want them to be, but they are extremely tasty, and act as a sort of handheld crouton. This is a great recipe to share, so plan an adventure with your friends soon!

This recipe has been campified from a traditional Armenian dish called ghapama featured in Issue 14 of Lucky Peach magazine.

Everyone loves pie and potatoes on Thanksgiving, so we put them together into one dish. It’s a rustic, free form pie that is hard to screw up. Cook it in your dutch oven over the campfire. We roasted the vegetables a bit before our trip, so assembling and cooking pies takes very little time. This is helpful if you have only one dutch oven and lots of hungry guests.

This Roasted Potato Squash Galette should be finished with a drizzle (or generous dollop) of Cashew Garlic Sauce. It’s a simple sauce that is creamy, yet vegan, making it less perishable than a dairy option. The sauce makes this dish. The recipe included makes a full mason jar, which should be enough for the galette, along with all the side munching of extra butternut squash pieces going on around you while you’re cooking it. If you’re lucky enough to have leftover sauce, it’s also great as a sandwich spread or vegetable dip the next day.

And where would Thanksgiving be without a good stuffing? Bird or no, the stuffing is an important staple on every Thanksgiving menu. Our friends at Fresh off the Grid created this gorgeous Apple Fennel Stuffing that adds needed heartiness and fall flavor to the table. I’m already imagining my day-after leftover squash, stuffing and creamy garlic spread sandwich on my hike. Click here to check out their recipe.

You can make fries out of most veggies, and they are all delicious. I love zucchini fries and mushroom fries and regular ol’ potato fries, but I really love green bean fries a lot. The most difficult part of making a breaded recipe while camping is the egg dredge. We’ve avoided that here by using chia seeds instead. They can be mixed with water to create an egg-like texture that will hold the breading onto the veggies quite effectively, and there’s no perishability or transport factor to consider.

The breading on green beans generally doesn’t appear to do well holding onto the beans (due to their tough skin), but when baked, the whole thing has the crisp coated texture that you’re looking for.