The Family Camp Cookbook: Easy, Fun, and Delicious Meals to Enjoy Outdoors

The Family Camp Cookbook is such a friendly and fun collection of tips and recipes for outdoor dining by Dr. Emily Vikre. Due out 29th March 2022 from Quarto on their Harvard Common Press imprint, it's 192 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats. 

Wow, this was a fun book. I grew up in a family who loved camping and RV'ing and some of my fondest memories of growing up were related to food and family. This book is full of funny (and some cautionary) bits of advice about camping and food, preparation and selection of tools and supplies, and getting the most out of enjoying the great outdoors. 

I liked the accessible and logical layout. The introduction has some good tips for equipment and tools recommendations (the author doesn't mention brands, but does a good job of giving a balanced overview). The following chapters contain the recipes arranged thematically: breakfast, lunches (includes trail food on the go and dishes to prepare and eat in-camp), dinners, and treats & drinks. The author has included a LOT of recipes.. there are more than 75 at a rough count). 

Recipes contain a description and background introduction, ingredients in a bullet list, and step-by-step cooking instructions. Ingredient measurements are supplied in American standard measurements with metric measurements in parentheses (yay!).  The nutritional information is not included. Extra tips or recipe alternatives are listed in text boxes in the recipes. The recipes themselves are fairly straightforward and are made for the most part with easily sourced ingredients. Many are very simple, none of them are overly complex. Recipes with pre-preparation to do at home are listed in a sidebar.

The photography is well done and abundant; most of the recipes are illustrated with photographs which are clear and well done.Vegetarian recipes are not marked as such. Many of the recipes which aren't vegan-friendly could be made plant based with a little experimentation. (Almost all of the recipes are streamlined and don't contain many ingredients).

This is a nice collection of recipes and even allowing for the fact that some of them are very similar to others in the same category, this will keep camping/outdoors fans going for ages. These are simple "everyday" recipes which are anything but boring. We tried several dishes and all of them were tasty and well written.

We're definitely going to try more of these recipes.  Well written book, tasty recipes.

Four and a half stars. This is a solid recipe book which will be used. It would make a superlative housewarming gift to a friend or family member who enjoys camping as a hobby.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.