Camp Fire - Hobo Pie

Camping season has come to an end for most of us in Western Washington. Props to you die-hard campers that will be continuing on. I shall not be joining you, but admire your lack of concern for the rain and cold. My family was fortunate enough to find a new camping spot this year, up by Bellingham, called Larrabee State Park. We stayed three nights over Labor Day weekend. It was a beautiful weekend with mild weather, and only a few hours of rain during the daylight hours. We went on a gorgeous hike up to Fragrance Lake, although if you ask my daughter, it was awful and far too long. I think she's just plotting to destroy everything I love and enjoy. The one thing that we can all agree on as a family is that fires are Nature's television, and making meals while camping is a joy. One of our favorites is Hobo Pie.

I do not like the name of this food, but I do love the food. We make ours with whichever ground meat we have on hand, and whichever veggies need to be used up. This last trip we made our pies with ground turkey, red onions, green pepper, carrots, and potato. The term hobo bothers me some so I decided to do some research, and learned that these tasty treats can also be called: mountain pies, campfire pies, toasties, jaffles, and pie shams. I also learned that many people make mountain pies with bread, and they're often a dessert, not savory at all! My favorite camping dessert is the s'more, or a nice baked apple. I don't think I need another recipe for a sweet, but I was excited by some of your favorite recipes: quiche-in-a-bread-bowl, pancakes, egg-in-a-bag, roasted corncakes, trout, and dutch oven lasagna. Some of you are mighty ambitious camping cooks, and I would like to be invited on your next camping trip, or at least bring you along on mine.

Last time we made this dish the veggies took forever to cook with the meat, so we sautéed the veggies over a camp stove until semi-tender before putting them in the foil with the ground turkey.

The we put 1/2 lb. of ground turkey on four, 1 1/2 foot pieces of foil, smashed the meat out really thin, spooned the veggies over top, and wrapped the whole thing up, as pictured above.

The finished product took about 30 minutes over an open fire. We made sure to rotate the pies around the grill about every 5-10 minutes, and flipped them over halfway through.

My daughter picked wild blackberries and cooked them with some coke. The result was a cranberry sauce-like concoction that was surprising delicious with the turkey, almost like Thanksgiving!