by M. Es Torrens

Created on: July 18, 2009

Camping is sometimes referred to as the poor man's holiday, but the unwary camper might return from his trip a great deal poorer than he anticipated at the start. The culprit? Food. Without proper planning you might end up spending a great deal more than you budgeted for your camping trip. Below are seven ways to save money on food when you are camping.

1) Plan out your menu ahead of time. Normally you know how long your camping trip will be, so take a few minute to plan out a day-by-day menu for all your meals and snacks. Depending on your mode of camping (backpacking, facilitated campsite, car camping etc.) a quick scan of your menu will already let you see if you are expecting too much out of a limited budget and limited kitchen facilities.

2) With your menu in hand, go grocery shopping for the items that you don't have on hand. Don't forget things like salt, seasonings and condiments. Groceries near campsites are notoriously expensive - so buying your food on your home turf is more likely to save you money.

3) Don't buy prepackaged mixes. If you wouldn't normally make pancakes or rice pilaf with a mix at home, don't buy it for your camping trip. Dry ingredients can be combined and placed in Ziploc bags ahead of time as a homemade mix. It does take extra planning on your part, but since you already know your menu, it is no more time than if you were prepping for the same meal at home. This is especially a big money saver if you plan to have trail mix. Buying the individual nuts, dried fruit and other ingredients in bulk and then combining them yourself will not only give a you a mix tailored to your tastes, but is likely to cost you less money than a similar prepackaged mix.

4) Decide on what to do about meat, milk, and eggs. While powdered, or dehydrated variants of these staples exist, usually they are only of interest to long term campers and backpackers. However, fresh products often present a strain on the budget if they are purchased at the last minute from a store near the campsite. Milk and meat can both be bought ahead of time and frozen. If placed directly into a cold, quality, ice chest it should stay at safe temperatures for as many as three days. If you have an electric ice chest that plugs into the battery of your car, fresh, unfrozen meat could be kept until its expiration date. Eggs can also keep for three days or more if the ice chest remains cool.

5) Stock up on onions, potatoes, and carrots.

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