100 Easy Camping Recipes by Bonnie Scott

I recently found a site that keeps track of all the free/on sale Kindle books -- updated hourly (!?!!?).

I subscribed to their site and so far have found 4 books (I'm picky, ok?) that I thought would be interesting.

One of these was a book of Camping Recipes.

I love camping.

Camping is something my family did every year since I can remember -- we'd go every spring and every fall and we usually went to a place in North Carolina near Sliding Rock  (We even asked for the same camp site and pretty often, we got it).

I remember eating egg burritos (eggs, salsa and cheese in a warm burrito shell -- mmm!), bacon, burgers, hot dogs, and the usual simple camp fare -- nothing beats an open fire when it comes to creating a simple, delicious meal.

So, I cracked this book open intent on reliving some happy camping memories and storing away some ideas for when I take my husband (an extreme IN-sider) on a trip.

The book started out obvious to the extreme:

"Water is essential."

...yes.  Yes, it is...and why would I not remember that?!

I was a quarter through the book before it even got to the recipes, and most of the "prologue" was basic, everybody-knows-this stuff (some of which didn't even apply to cooking!).

This did not boost my expectations for the recipes, and to some extent, I was justified in categorizing this book as a simple should-have-been-a-booklet for a crappy gift store somewhere in the wilderness (a for-beginner's camp site welcome center type thing).

BUT

Some of the recipes and how-to's are actually brilliant --

-- boiling eggs in a bag (???)
-- slicing a hot dog and sticking a piece of cheese inside, then wrapping it all in bacon (!!!!!)
-- easy hobo stew-type dishes (which are hard to get right the first few times w/o a recipe)
-- delicious options for dutch oven desserts
-- classic dishes such as hotdogs-in-biscuits, campfire chili, and s'mores

So while I laughed through the first part of the book, I became intrigued with some of the recipes (several I'm actually going to try out at home!), and by the end I realized I had a new cookbook -- for free!

3/5 stars and plans to make that cheesy-hotdog-bacon yummy-ness PRONTO.