Menu planning for retreats and camps
So, you’re in charge of planning a menu for a weekend retreat, campout, or other extended event. You’ve got multiple breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and evening snacks (what Scouts call a Cracker Barrel) to plan for all at once. Doggedly, you start penciling in things you know how to cook, or things you like – with an eye to not busting the budget – and what do you wind up with?
All too frequently, you wind up with something lopsided. Like five meals featuring potatoes. Or cheese in everything. Or pork: consider, pork is a less expensive meat, and is also prominently used in breakfast menus; so, it’s easy to plan a weekend featuring bacon, sausage, pizza (with sausage and pepperoni), ham, pork chops . . . We all play to our strengths, but just throwing a menu for a weekend together can give you some strange results.
Principle number 1: Variety is important
Look at all your main dishes for all those meals. I like to offer a variety over the event. Pork, chicken, beef, vegetarian can all play a role. If you feel comfortable doing fish or game meats, all the better. Not only should you have a variety of proteins over the whole event, but watch out for overloading a particular day with meals that overuse a particular source.
At the same time that you are making sure that your main dishes show a nice variety in their central ingredients, remember to vary your sides and your cooking methods. It’s easy to overuse standards like potatoes and cheese. It’s also easy to serve too many fried foods. And watch out for sugar (see below)!
Don’t be afraid to stretch your diners, either – even kids. I was making pulled pork for a Scout weekend and decided I’d throw some collard greens at them. I didn’t tell them what they were, and they didn’t ask – and those teenagers ate the heck out of them. I made quiche for breakfast for a Cub Scout event, which boggled their parents, but we told them it was cheese pie, and they ate it without fuss. Food prejudices can be overcome, particularly if the food is generally good. And not everybody will eat everything; providing variety forestalls someone feeling hungry and out of sorts later because one didn’t like everything that was served at the last meal.
Principle number 2: Nutrition is a balancing act
The are various food pyramids out there. All of them show a daily recommended meat intake of 2-3 portions, followed by a larger number of portions of dairy and fruits/vegetables. Grains constitute the base of the pyramid (5-11 portions per day). Sugars, fats, and oils are officially recommended to be used sparingly. Of course, the more active your participants are, the more calories you can give them. And weather plays a part in what kind of fuel the body needs.
But things break down even more finely than that. Vegetables offer a wide variety of needed nutrients. A single day out and about can’t include everything, but the more days you are planning for, the more you need to make sure that there are leafy vegetables, dark green vegetables, and orange/yellow vegetables on the menu. And yes, potatoes and beans are vegetables, but they function more like starches and proteins, respectively. Particularly when planning meals for kids, coming up with ways to make them eat carrots (e.g.) can be challenging. And it’s not just kids: I have met a fair number of adults, even moms, who refuse to eat various common things. When planning menus for the local Tri Kappa sorority, I was warned that peas were not to be countenanced.
Principle number 3: Breakfast is the simplest meal, and the hardest to plan
Americans are big breakfast eaters, but we have a limited palette to paint with, so to speak. Coffee and milk. Oatmeal or cereal (especially for the adults who need something to keep their bowels moving). Fruit. From that point, most of our breakfast ideas draw on eggs, pork, and sweetened, bready things. Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of that. But you have to think of your breakfast menus not being monotonous when compared with each other, but also having the main ingredients of breakfast not being overused in other meals the same day, e.g. sausage links for breakfast, sausage pizza for lunch, and lasagne for supper or hash browns for breakfast, French fries for lunch, and baked potatoes with dinner.
Think of breakfast as a basic foundation that doesn’t need to change much: coffee and milk; oatmeal or cereal or biscuits or pancakes or toast; fruit in some form, including juice. Then add a hearty main dish that adds variety.
Principle number 4: Think culturally
America has absorbed and modified cuisines from all over the world. And you don’t have to be expert in any of these cuisines, but it can help to imagine meals across an event being from different cultural locations. On a recent weekend I was cooking for Scouts, I had a breakfast, two lunches, and a dinner to plan for. We did meals based in French (Croque Monsieur, a fancy hot ham and cheese sandwich), German (a pork and kraut Eintopf), Chinese (beef stir fry), and Appalachian (biscuits and sausage gravy) cuisines. By thinking of a given meal as Italian, or Irish, or Cajun, or whatever, sides automatically suggest themselves for that meal and flavor profiles stand out between meals. You have less likelihood of repeating yourself with a given ingredient, and even if you do (notice my using pork three times in four meals), it’ll come out different.
(BTW, when I planned for that weekend, I did so as part of a series of three weekends for the same group, as if all the meals were to be served in a single, week-long event. So my ingredient use and nutritional balance and flavor profiles were all in balance and I didn’t repeat any meals over all three events. You wouldn’t think that Scouts notice this, but they do, and they appreciate it. It also meant that I wasn’t stuck trying to make my tired brain come up with menus every month.)
All too frequently, you wind up with something lopsided. Like five meals featuring potatoes. Or cheese in everything. Or pork: consider, pork is a less expensive meat, and is also prominently used in breakfast menus; so, it’s easy to plan a weekend featuring bacon, sausage, pizza (with sausage and pepperoni), ham, pork chops . . . We all play to our strengths, but just throwing a menu for a weekend together can give you some strange results.
Principle number 1: Variety is important
Look at all your main dishes for all those meals. I like to offer a variety over the event. Pork, chicken, beef, vegetarian can all play a role. If you feel comfortable doing fish or game meats, all the better. Not only should you have a variety of proteins over the whole event, but watch out for overloading a particular day with meals that overuse a particular source.
At the same time that you are making sure that your main dishes show a nice variety in their central ingredients, remember to vary your sides and your cooking methods. It’s easy to overuse standards like potatoes and cheese. It’s also easy to serve too many fried foods. And watch out for sugar (see below)!
Don’t be afraid to stretch your diners, either – even kids. I was making pulled pork for a Scout weekend and decided I’d throw some collard greens at them. I didn’t tell them what they were, and they didn’t ask – and those teenagers ate the heck out of them. I made quiche for breakfast for a Cub Scout event, which boggled their parents, but we told them it was cheese pie, and they ate it without fuss. Food prejudices can be overcome, particularly if the food is generally good. And not everybody will eat everything; providing variety forestalls someone feeling hungry and out of sorts later because one didn’t like everything that was served at the last meal.
Principle number 2: Nutrition is a balancing act
The are various food pyramids out there. All of them show a daily recommended meat intake of 2-3 portions, followed by a larger number of portions of dairy and fruits/vegetables. Grains constitute the base of the pyramid (5-11 portions per day). Sugars, fats, and oils are officially recommended to be used sparingly. Of course, the more active your participants are, the more calories you can give them. And weather plays a part in what kind of fuel the body needs.
But things break down even more finely than that. Vegetables offer a wide variety of needed nutrients. A single day out and about can’t include everything, but the more days you are planning for, the more you need to make sure that there are leafy vegetables, dark green vegetables, and orange/yellow vegetables on the menu. And yes, potatoes and beans are vegetables, but they function more like starches and proteins, respectively. Particularly when planning meals for kids, coming up with ways to make them eat carrots (e.g.) can be challenging. And it’s not just kids: I have met a fair number of adults, even moms, who refuse to eat various common things. When planning menus for the local Tri Kappa sorority, I was warned that peas were not to be countenanced.
Principle number 3: Breakfast is the simplest meal, and the hardest to plan
Americans are big breakfast eaters, but we have a limited palette to paint with, so to speak. Coffee and milk. Oatmeal or cereal (especially for the adults who need something to keep their bowels moving). Fruit. From that point, most of our breakfast ideas draw on eggs, pork, and sweetened, bready things. Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of that. But you have to think of your breakfast menus not being monotonous when compared with each other, but also having the main ingredients of breakfast not being overused in other meals the same day, e.g. sausage links for breakfast, sausage pizza for lunch, and lasagne for supper or hash browns for breakfast, French fries for lunch, and baked potatoes with dinner.
Think of breakfast as a basic foundation that doesn’t need to change much: coffee and milk; oatmeal or cereal or biscuits or pancakes or toast; fruit in some form, including juice. Then add a hearty main dish that adds variety.
Principle number 4: Think culturally
America has absorbed and modified cuisines from all over the world. And you don’t have to be expert in any of these cuisines, but it can help to imagine meals across an event being from different cultural locations. On a recent weekend I was cooking for Scouts, I had a breakfast, two lunches, and a dinner to plan for. We did meals based in French (Croque Monsieur, a fancy hot ham and cheese sandwich), German (a pork and kraut Eintopf), Chinese (beef stir fry), and Appalachian (biscuits and sausage gravy) cuisines. By thinking of a given meal as Italian, or Irish, or Cajun, or whatever, sides automatically suggest themselves for that meal and flavor profiles stand out between meals. You have less likelihood of repeating yourself with a given ingredient, and even if you do (notice my using pork three times in four meals), it’ll come out different.
(BTW, when I planned for that weekend, I did so as part of a series of three weekends for the same group, as if all the meals were to be served in a single, week-long event. So my ingredient use and nutritional balance and flavor profiles were all in balance and I didn’t repeat any meals over all three events. You wouldn’t think that Scouts notice this, but they do, and they appreciate it. It also meant that I wasn’t stuck trying to make my tired brain come up with menus every month.)