Hobo Huggy

I went camping this weekend as a birthday / bon voyage celebration for my boyfriend. This was not roughing it, but more like car camping since we spent the first half of the weekend moving his apartment into storage.

Even though I spend about ten hours a day communing with nature, I’ve never been a big camper. You can blame that on my parents and an encounter with a bear three years ago in upstate New York.

My first attempt at foil-wrapped veggies was quite a success. One friend called them Hobo Huggies and another called them Boy Scout Packets. I can find no reference to either of those exact names, but I like the sound of Hobo Huggy. So, Hobo Huggy it is!

The Huggies I made contained onion, carrots, potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, portabella mushrooms, and marinated tempeh.

Since we were cleaning out the fridge in preparation for moving, I combined the remains of Asian sesame dressing and red pepper dressing to make a sauce. I also added soy sauce, mustard, ketchup, and honey into the sauce. I seriously was trying to use up every thing in the fridge.

I spread the uncooked veggies on two layers of tin foil so they were not piled high. Then I sprinkled the vegetables with salt, pepper, garlic powder, oregano, and chipotle pepper powder. Next I spooned about 4 or 5 tablespoons of sauce over the vegetables. I wrapped those babies up and then wrapped the whole packet one more time with tin foil.

We put the packets on hot coals, flipping them occasionally, and waited until they were done. (They're just sitting on the rack in the picture. They were on coals when cooking.) I’m not sure how long it took, but it was less than an hour. The first time we checked, they were done.

They were perfect! I don’t know what it is, but they tasted 100 times better than when I put the left over veggies in my kitchen oven to roast the next day.

Oh yeah, I made sure to bring stuff for s'mores. I'm a dessert whore! Plus, how often do you get to light marshmallows on fire?

‘Tis the season, so more camping recipes here, here, and here.