cooking

I'm a pretty hopeless fisher. I've got all the gear but rarely catch anything. My favourite line from a John Williamson song goes, "Workin' hard at bein' lazy, no bait on the line". If you ever see a post from me about catching fish - ignore any advice given. But I can catch yabbies. And the kids had a great time doing it.

A VERY handy edition to our car-based camping setup is a small shelf or table on the rear door of our old Pajero. Of course it depends on what style of rear door you might have but for a side-opening door it works well. Check out the video. Very simple to make and cost nothing more than what I found in the shed and an hour of my time.

On our last trip we started to use our camp oven more. Works well and more on some of our meals later.

For now I just want to mention that it is important to 'cure' a cast iron camp oven to stop it rusting.

To cure anything cast iron, we first clean and dry it. Then coat the inside surface with cooking oil (you won't have to worry about the outside as it will be coated in soot from the fire) and warm the item over a slow heat for a fair while. The theory is that the heated iron will allow oil to impregnate the material. You may have to repeat this process a few times but eventually you'll get a rustproof item that is easy to clean.

A good website for camp oven info is http://www.aussiecampovencook.com/

Dehydrating hummus is a good lightweight tasty lunch treat for me. I use it with ryveta crackers and sometimes add a little piece of dried tomato and cheese.

Carrie describes how you make dried hummus.